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The first English-language collection of work by Brazilian psychoanalyst Fabio Herrmann.
Widely published, studied, and taught in his home country, Brazilian psychoanalyst Fabio Herrmann (1944–2006) is little known outside the region—until now. What Is Psychoanalysis? makes available in English for the first time the complete text of his "short book" O Que É Psicanálise, originally published in 1983, revised, expanded, and republished in 1999, along with eight talks and articles from throughout his career. Together, they provide an indispensable overview of Herrmann's unique contribution to the study of the psychoanalytic method, his understanding of multiple unconsciouses in the plural, or fields, and an introduction to his idea of high theory. Countering a tendency to focus on the outcomes of psychoanalyses, the theories as end results, Herrmann addresses how those theories were created—that is, the interpretive process. With each patient or cultural object under study, Herrmann creates new analytic hypotheses, or prototheories, and encourages his readers to do the same so that Psychoanalysis, a term he always took care to capitalize when referring to the discipline itself, can someday fulfill its vocational horizon and evolve as a general science of the psyche.
"Over the last two decades in Brazil, the field of psychoanalysis has finally made an effort to respond to criticisms from feminist, queer/quare, crip, Indigenous, and Black studies. Though Herrmann did not live long enough to think through all these new considerations, his focus on the interpretive method helped pave the way for this reckoning. Carefully translated and organized, this anthology finally allows Herrmann's contributions to go beyond the boundaries of the Portuguese language, giving the English-speaking public an opportunity to appreciate his long career as a writer, researcher, and trainer of multiple generations of psychoanalysts in Brazil." — Nilson Fernandes Dinis, São Carlos Federal University, Brazil
Fabio Herrmann (1944–2006) was a prolific psychoanalytic author from Brazil and the creator of Multiple Fields Theory. He authored eleven books, including two published posthumously, as well as hundreds of articles. He was greatly involved in the international psychoanalytic movement from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s before retreating to mostly clinical practice and teaching his theory at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo and the Brazilian Society of Psychoanalysis of São Paulo. Fernanda Sofio is an instructor of Brazilian psychoanalysis at the Blanton-Peale Institute of Psychoanalysis. She is the author of Literacura: psicanálise como forma literária and of Psicanálise na UTI: morte, vida e possíveis da interpretação. Dylan Blau Edelstein is a writer, translator, and researcher whose work explores the intersections of literary, artistic, and psychiatric practices in the Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking worlds, with a focus on Brazil. His work broadly centers artistic, literary, and psychiatric practices in twentieth-century Latin America, with a focus on Brazil.