On the Couch: Twenty Extraordinary Personalities, from Picasso to Putin

In this groundbreaking new book, psychotherapist Andrew Jamieson considers ten key principles of psychoanalysis and illuminates them through psychobiographies of twenty extraordinary people.

From Pablo Picasso's chaotic life, which illustrates Freud's concept of the unconscious, to Nelson Mandela's inspired achievements, which exemplify Jung's idea of Individuation; from John Bowlby's attachment theory as seen through the lives of Virginia Woolf and Franz Kafka to Melanie Klein's views on the close relationship between love and hate as these ideas are revealed through Cary Grant; from the primary human need for intimacy and connection, which was so obsessively pursued by Marilyn Monroe and W.B Yeats to the forces of Eros and Thanatos that tormented Ernest Hemingway, Andrew Jamieson removes psychoanalysis from its theoretical framework and explores these great lives in new ways. Other fascinating individuals examined include Josephine Baker, Viktor Frankl, Emma Jung, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Charles Darwin, Nicolas Copernicus, Burt Hellinger, Vladimir Putin, and Angela Merkel.

Andrew Jamieson trained at the Bath Centre for Psychotherapy and Counselling and received an MA in Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy at Middlesex University. He lectures and writes on psychotherapy's interconnection with philosophy, music, and literature. His most recent book is Midlife: Humanity's Secret Weapon. Parallel to his psychotherapeutic career, he has promoted orchestral concerts throughout the UK for over forty years.