Driven to Survive: Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis is a new book by Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau, PhD, published by IPBooks in 2018.
“Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau has given us a work of deep scholarship and original thought. Fully engrossing and forceful in presentation, it is a bold and necessary reworking of Freudian drive theory. Her new formulations will reshape our thinking and our way of listening. ” ~ Dan Jacobs, MD, Director of the Library
“This is a sharp, courageous, innovative and highly documented exploration of one of the most problematic, unsolved and disputed areas inside Freud’s theory: preservative drives, in between life and death drives. Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau develops here a revolutionary approach to the topic, involving an unexpected, substantive metapsychological revision, a subsequent remarkable change of clinical perspective, and a further reconsideration of many cultural assumptions which are connected with this new vision. A convincing proposal about a theoretical “shibboleth” that played for decades and still plays a divisive role in the psychoanalytic community.” ~ Stefano Bolognini, IPA Past President
About the Author
Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau, PhD, studied literature, philosophy and psychology in Heidelberg and Zürich, where she worked as a university professor for clinical psychology. She is a training and supervising analyst at the Swiss Psychoanalytic Society and at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Her areas of expertise are metapsychology, in particular drive theory, its clinical application, and applied psychoanalysis of creative processes. She is the author of two books and over 40 articles, published in many languages, and the editor of a Freud Reader and two collections of short stories. Currently she is the Chair of the IPA Culture Committee. She works in private practice in Chestnut Hill.
Contact library@bpsi.org to request access to an audio recording of Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau’s Meet the Author and book discussion event on Oct 2, 2018.
