Download Author: Chessick, Richard D. M.D., Ph.D.

Richard D. Chessick, M.D., Ph.D. is currently Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University, Emeritus Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst, Center for Psychoanalytic Study in Chicago, Emeritus Senior Attending Psychiatrist, Evanston Hospital, Evanston, IL, Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, Psychoanalytic Fellow of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, Corresponding Member of the German Psychoanalytic Society, Fellow of the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine, the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry and the American Orthopsychiatric Association. He is still in private practice of psychoanalysis in Evanston, IL. as he has been for about 60 years.

His Ph.D. is in Philosophy and he has taught as Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago and the McCormick Theological Seminary. He has served on the editorial boards of many psychiatric and psychoanalytic journals and repeatedly won “teacher of the year” awards at Northwestern. He received the Sigmund Freud Award for outstanding contributions to psychiatry and psychoanalysis from the American Society of Psychoanalytic Physicians and served as president of that society, and received a “Special Recognition Award” from the faculty and board of trustees of The Center for Psychoanalytic Study in Chicago “In appreciative gratitude for his contributions toward the advancement of the field of psychoanalysis.”

Dr. Chessick is a prolific writer and international speaker. He has produced 17 books in the fields of psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and philosophy and over 300 articles in professional journals; most recently “Special problems for the elderly psychoanalyst in the psychoanalytic process” in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 61:67-93,2013 and “What hath Freud wrought? Current confusion and controversies about the clinical practice of psychoanalysis and dynamic psychotherapy” in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry 42: 553-584, 2014. By invitation he wrote a column for 64 consecutive issues of the American Journal of Psychotherapy and over 200 book reviews in various professional journals. His books are titled: Agonie: Diary of a Twentieth Century Man, Intensive Psychotherapy of the Borderline Patient, Freud Teaches Psychotherapy, How Psychotherapy Heals, Why Psychotherapists Fail, A Brief Introduction to the Genius of Nietzsche, Psychology of the Self and the Treatment of Narcissism, Great Ideas in Psychotherapy, The Technique and Practice of Listening in Intensive Psychotherapy, The Technique and Practice of Intensive Psychotherapy, What Constitutes the Patient in Psychotherapy, Dictionary for Psychotherapists, Dialogue Concerning Contemporary Psychodynamic Therapy, Emotional Illness and Creativity, Psychoanalytic Clinical Practice, The Future of Psychoanalysis, and Descent Into Darkness. He is currently working on his intellectual memoirs: Apologia Pro Vita Mea, scheduled to be published in Poland.

He lectured on “The Special Theory of Psychotherapeutic Interaction” in Oslo, Norway, “Concepts of Cure in Intensive Psychotherapy” and “Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Science” in West Berlin, “Adult Eating Disorders” and “The Death Instinct and the Future of Man” at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, gave 8 lectures to the Kenyan-American Psychotherapy Seminar in Nairobi, Kenya, a series of lectures on narcissistic and psychosomatic disorders at the Keio University Hospital and served as guest consultant at the Japanese Medical School Hospital in Tokyo, Japan, “Outpatient Psychotherapy of the Borderline Patient” and “Franz Alexander and the Development of Psychoanalysis in the United States” at the University of Würzburg, “The Phenomenology of Erwin Strauss and the Epistemology of Psychoanalysis” and “What Brings About Change in Psychoanalytic Treatment” at the University of Heidelberg, “Listening to the Psychotic Patient” at the University of Marburg, “Postmodern Psychoanalysis or Wild Analysis?” at the University of Berlin Department of Psychiatry in Germany, “The Phenomenology of the Emerging Self” at the Departments of Philosophy and Psychiatry at Charles University in Prague, Czechoslovakia, “The psychotherapy of a terrified communist” in Milan and “Dante’s Divine Comedy revisited” in Venice, Italy at the OPIFR meetings, “Psychoanalytic Listening” to the Turkish Society of Psychiatry and Neurology, Ankara, Turkey, “The Explosion of the Other,” a case presentation at the Sorbonne and “The Five Channel Theory of Psychoanalytic Listening” both at the University of Paris XII and The University of Basel, Switzerland, “Psychoanalysis of a Wealthy and Successful Borderline Patient” at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, “The Function of Empathy in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy” at the Oxford Dept. of Psychiatry in Aylesbury, “The Implications of Postmodern Thought for the Theories and Practice of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy” at the University of Warwick and “What Constitutes Education” to the Cambridge University Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, in England as well as many other lectures and presentations all over Canada and the U.S.A.

Dr. Chessick has been called a Renaissance Man. He brings an unusual humanistic breadth and scholarly depth to his writings, which present his many years of clinical experience and extensive familiarity with psychoanalytic theory with a clarity of exposition from his philosophical background.

57 eBooks available.

Descent Into Darkness:The Psychodynamics of Mental Illness: An Introduction and Illustration in the Form of a Novel

This book is unique because it presents a thorough coverage of the psychodynamics of mental illness in the form of a novel. The characters engage on a trip to Europe beginning in Chicago and proceed to Ankara, Berlin, Cappadocia, Hattusas, Ephesus, Pergamum, Troy, Istanbul, and Milan. The reason for the novel form is that the author feels the fullest understanding of the human psyche requires a dialogue between science and the humanities.

The basic plot of the novel is that Martin, an aging Chicago psychoanalyst, receives a grant to lead an educational tour. He centers it on Turkey in order to build on Freud’s metaphor of the mind being similar to archeological layers where what is new is built on and incorporates the remnants of the past. The party of five couples, a collection of mental health professionals, academics, spouses, and others, provide living examples of the psychopathology articulated in the numerous lectures Martin delivers on the tour. So they inadvertently serve as clinical examples.

At the same time the personal internal sufferings of Martin are described, beginning with his infatuation with a patient and ending with a serious psychosomatic condition, illustrating how psychological problems can lead to the development and exacerbation of such illnesses. Woven into the dramatic stories and lectures are references to philosophers, psychiatrists, novelists, historians, playwrites, composers, artists, and ancient writers, as well as historical dissertations that illustrate the layering of one strata of human and social development upon another.

There is a discussion of training of therapists and treatment procedures, based on a profound empathy and deep concern for the mental suffering and pain that can characterize the human condition. The conclusion of the novel has a clever twist that drives the messages of the novel directly to the reader.

This is a book to read for fun and adventure, but also teaches a great deal, the author is an internationally known author, teacher, lecturer, and clinician and offers it here in an unusual and dramatic way. (462 pp.)

About the Author

Psychology of the Self and the Treatment of Narcissism

This volume is a comprehensive introduction to the psychology of the self and the clinical problem of narcissism. Dr. Chessick, a prolific writer, scholar, and gifted clinician, approaches this challenging and controversial subject by placing Kohut’s contributions and those of his followers in historical perspective. He takes a general look at narcissism and demonstrates that some of the difficulties that arise in the treatment of the narcissistic patient are due to confusion about the meaning of narcissistic pathology. A complete review of the psychology of the self is given both as it began in the narrow sense of the term and later in the more controversial broader sense. Kohut’s theories are compared and contrasted with those of Freud, Melanie Klein, Kernberg, Jacobson, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Balint, Laing, Sartre, Lacan, Foucault, and many others.

In Kohut’s later writing, the self as a supraordinate concept becomes elaborated in its bipolar nature (ambitions and guiding ideals), showing itself as a clinical problem primarily when self-cohesion is not firm. According to self psychology, Freud’s structural model (id, ego, superego) attempts to describe the inner psyche through an observer equidistant from the substructures and outside the patient’s psyche, Kohut’s self/selfobject model stations the therapist-observer inside the psychic apparatus so as to conceptualize the patient’s subjective experience. The therapist firms the patient’s sense of self utilizing empathic comprehension. Structure building through transmuting internalization as a consequence of the therapist’s empathic understanding and interpretation establishes a cure of the disorder of the self. The goal of treatment is to strengthen the self of the patient, enabling “right choices” to be made as a result of the reparative activities in the therapeutic process, and a sustaining empathic matrix (that we all need) to be developed.

The core of this book is in the invaluable clinical comments and case illustrations that make clear the full implementation of Kohut’s work for the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Issues of transference and countertransference, as well as specific techniques in the treatment of the narcissistic patient, are discussed in the framework of self psychology, and Dr. Chessick develops some new applications, for example, in the treatment of psychosomatic disorders. The controversial concept of empathy is central to this approach, and Dr. Chessick clarifies Kohut’s writing on its use and misuse.

Self psychology has innumerable ideas and techniques to offer therapists, especially in the treatment of patients who suffer defects in the sense of the self. Dr. Chessick offers a balanced view and critical perspective on Kohut’s challenging insights into experiencing the patient through empathy, and on the introspective skills required of the contemporary psychotherapist. (561 pp.)

Narcissistic and Borderline Personality Disorders

It is fascinating to study the evolution of the concept of narcissism and narcissistic pathology from the phenomenological and experience-near mythological descriptions of the Greeks to the psychodynamic and experience-distant conflict interpretations used to explain the condition by Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalysts. Built into this situation is the eventual divergence of Kohut’s contributions and his psychology of the self from the mainstream of Freudian conflict interpretation. (76 pp.)

Narcissism in our Culture

We will return to this crucial problem of narcissism in our contemporary culture many times, because Kohut places emphasis on the quality of the mothering received by the infant as it influences the infant’s formation of self. Kohut’s views stand in sharp contrast especially to Kleinian concepts in which the intrapsychic processes in the infant are thought to proceed more independently of the external input.

Freud and his Followers

We turn now to some of the attempts made by psychoanalysts to understand the phenomena of narcissism in depth.

Melanie Klein and Early Object Relation Theory

Klein recognized that, from birth, powerful innate aggressive drives posed fundamental obstacles to life. She understood and took seriously Freud’s theory that, with the individual as with the species, there is a brief flicker of life and then ultimately extinction and destruction as the death instinct prevails and all organic matter returns to the inorganic form. She attempted to develop a metapsychology to explain that which Freud never made clear: how do the life instincts fight this delaying action? In Klein’s view, this was accomplished by deflecting the death instincts outward in the form of aggression (as Freud said) and then attenuating this aggression through recurring cycles of projection and introjection of “good” and “bad” objects.