What Alive Means

Internationally acclaimed for the clarity of his writing and thinking, Ogden radically reconceives psychoanalysis as a therapeutic process in which the patient is helped not only to achieve self‑understanding, but to become more fully oneself.

The individual comes to experience life in a way that feels more real, more alive, more personal, more imaginative, and more one’s own. Ogden is concerned with helping the patient reclaim lost life, life that one was not able to experience when it occurred because it was too painful, too confusing, and too dangerous. Ogden pushes the envelope of psychoanalysis as he presents ways in which he rethinks the concepts of the unconscious and analytic time.

He expands on what it means to be oneself in an authentic way and how clinical process can help achieve that goal. Building on Ogden’s own highly influential work on the nature of psychoanalysis, this book is essential reading for all psychoanalysts and other readers interested in expanding their understanding of contemporary analytic thinking and clinical practice.