Thomas H. Ogden, Reader of Freud

Abstract

The chapter intends to discuss the Freudian legacy that appears and persists as a reference in Ogden’s work. To this end, it presents two moments in the author’s work, addressing two of his first and two of his last writings, through the notions of psychoanalytic dialogue and creative reading. During the first period, the search for organizing structures of subjectivity stands out, in which the dialogue with psychoanalytic theories allows us to propose a matrix of the mind as a deep linguistic generational structure, based on Chomsky, and a more primitive autistic-contiguous subjective position than the paranoid schizoid one, based on Klein. The dialogue with Freud at first is indirect, where he appears either in the place of a general psychoanalytic frame of reference, or in the place of representative of a strongly drive-based psychodynamic conception. In the second period, Ogden makes a broader dialogue with the different psychoanalytic traditions, and metapsychological dialogue gives way to the creative reading of seminal texts. In this new context, Freud is revisited as an exponent of the artisanal, singular and human dimension of the psychoanalytic craft, as well as a pioneer of a theory of object relations within classical Psychoanalysis.