Dodi Goldman

Acclaimed Winnicott scholar Dodi Goldman offers an intriguing account of the psyche’s work of imaginative elaboration.Why does the world feel one way when we are imaginatively alive to it and quite another when we are not? How does one both imagine and see things as they are? What happens when we cannot do so? This book creatively explores the interplay between the imaginative and actual in psychoanalysis and life. Each chapter centers around an evocative visual image—a prehistoric figurine, a Hindu lithograph, an Italian etching, an Inuit statue, a painting by Magritte, and more—to reveal unexpected connections and novel insights into what enlivens experience to make the personal landscape shimmer.With a fresh and delightfully playful approach, this volume is essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, humanities scholars, and anyone curious about the fragile alliance between the imaginative and actual in human experience.

Acclaimed Winnicott scholar Dodi Goldman offers an intriguing account of the psyche’s work of imaginative elaboration.Why does the world feel one way when we are imaginatively alive to it and quite another when we are not? How does one both imagine and see things as they are? What happens when we cannot do so? This book creatively explores the interplay between the imaginative and actual in psychoanalysis and life. Each chapter centers around an evocative visual image—a prehistoric figurine, a Hindu lithograph, an Italian etching, an Inuit statue, a painting by Magritte, and more—to reveal unexpected connections and novel insights into what enlivens experience to make the personal landscape shimmer.With a fresh and delightfully playful approach, this volume is essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, humanities scholars, and anyone curious about the fragile alliance between the imaginative and actual in human experience.

A Beholder's Share demonstrates how a sense of reality is evoked in the unpredictable space between imagination and adaptation. The world calls forth something in each of us—a beholder’s share—which in turn calls forth something in the world. Though usually viewed as opposites, imagination and reality make uneasy but necessary bedfellows. Part I of A Beholder’s Share shows how fantasy generates novelty by creating versions of what is already known, while imagination allows what seems familiar to be seen afresh. Goldman’s essays offer unexpected takes on common clinical encounters: clashes of belief, the search for generational dialogue, the awkward discomfort of feeling like a fake, the problem of how and when to end analysis, the strains of working with psychotic anxieties.Part II, ‘Winnicott’s Living Legacy,’ illuminates Winnicott’s preoccupation with difficulties inherent in contact with reality. These chapters bring to life Winnicott’s personal struggle with an area of experience his own two analyses failed to touch, the tangled relationship with Masud Khan, his recognition of dissociation as "a queer kind of truth," and how Romantic poets shaped Winnicott’s view of what is felt as real. Bringing together Dodi Goldman’s seminal and new writings, A Beholder’s Share will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as students and teachers of the arts, literature, and humanities.

A Beholder's Share demonstrates how a sense of reality is evoked in the unpredictable space between imagination and adaptation. The world calls forth something in each of us—a beholder’s share—which in turn calls forth something in the world. Though usually viewed as opposites, imagination and reality make uneasy but necessary bedfellows. Part I of A Beholder’s Share shows how fantasy generates novelty by creating versions of what is already known, while imagination allows what seems familiar to be seen afresh. Goldman’s essays offer unexpected takes on common clinical encounters: clashes of belief, the search for generational dialogue, the awkward discomfort of feeling like a fake, the problem of how and when to end analysis, the strains of working with psychotic anxieties.Part II, ‘Winnicott’s Living Legacy,’ illuminates Winnicott’s preoccupation with difficulties inherent in contact with reality. These chapters bring to life Winnicott’s personal struggle with an area of experience his own two analyses failed to touch, the tangled relationship with Masud Khan, his recognition of dissociation as "a queer kind of truth," and how Romantic poets shaped Winnicott’s view of what is felt as real. Bringing together Dodi Goldman’s seminal and new writings, A Beholder’s Share will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as students and teachers of the arts, literature, and humanities.