Becoming Alive: Psychoanalysis and Vitality

Becoming Alivedraws on the Winnicottian idea of transitional objects, and puts forward the argument that human beings relate to and use objects in order to generate experiences of 'being alive'. Enlivened by case vignettes and examples drawn from wider culture, this book explores the idea that vitality has been picked up rather late in psychoanalysis, and stresses how becoming alive affects our intersubjective relationships as well as our relationship to objects. This is an intriguing book articulating a developmental psychoanalytic account of the experience of 'being alive'. It shows the value of a variety of psychoanalytic perspectives held together in tension and emphasises the working-out of theoretical concepts that can express the experience of being alive, a process that involves reconsidering a wide range of psychoanalytic ideas.