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Until more recently, it wasn't common to find books/articles on "how to do" psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The knowledge of how to perform the therapy came from the therapist's training analysis, which, going back to Freud, used to be the only requirement for becoming a psychoanalyst (cf. The question of Lay Analysis by Freud). However, there are now some "psychodynamic" therapies that provide a "how to" look at therapy using psychoanalytic principles. Two that I am familiar with are Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy or ISTDP and Brief Dynamic Therapywhich is a little better in my opinion. Glen Gabbard, who I like a lot, has also written a text that lays out some of the basics of psychotherapy from an analytic perspective.

Speaking of Gabbard, I highly recommend his text Psychodynamic Psychiatry in Clinical Practice. It provides an overview of some of the major psychoanalytic theories (drive, ego, object, self). Unfortunately he doesn't cover Lacan, and briefly touches on intersubjectivity. Another book in this vein (without the diagnostic applications) is Freud and Beyond by Stephen Mitchell and Margaret Black. Not to diminish Dr. Black, but Stephen Mitchell is really great. I recommend anything by him, especially Hope and Dread in Psychoanalysis and Relationality.

Finally, any recommendation on contemporary American psychoanalytic writing would be incomplete without mentioning Thomas Ogden, especially The Matrix of the Mind and The Primitive Edge of Experience. His more recent works are great as well, but a little more nebulous and might be less applicable to beginning psychoanalytic work.

Oh, and I can't help but recommend this little book by Owen Renik Practical Psychoanalysis. Renik is great, and I really enjoy is work, especially his thinking on "getting real in psychoanalysis." Though he is far from the traditional views of analytic neutrality and abstinence.

I would definitely not start with Lacan if you’re a complete beginner. I would start with later Freud, work my way back to earlier Freud - so that you can see how his thinking changed -, definitely take a dip in the cool waters of object relations, definitely read up on the British Independent Group, and then start with Lacan. When starting Lacan, I’d strongly recommend this book , and then Écrits.

Be warned though. Lacan is not a simple read. Almost all of his publications were transcribed versions of his lectures, and translations from French. French has a vastly different structure from English, and Lacan spoke academic, psychoanalytic French.

I don’t say this to discourage you. Lacan is one of the single most interesting authors I’ve ever read. He’s why I want to become a psychoanalyst. But with that said, he is very challenging, and going in without preparation significantly undercuts your understanding and enjoyment of what you’re reading.

Learning about history is not so important. The practice is what really matters. Consciously purifying the body and mind to ready it to awaken the energy.

So being aware of things which cause an emotional reaction, like lust for sex, want for material possessions and social recognition, fame and money etc, political reactions, moral judgements etc.

Be conscious of those things, they unsettle and disorganise emotions so the energy disperses.

Then in meditation take a few deep breaths to relax the body and mind, then drop and expand your mind into the body. It's really important to get the body involved. Transform the body and the mind transforms with it as the energy circulates!

Then do that breathing technique from that last video until it becomes a habit, with the tongue against the roof of the mouth behind the teeth. That opens the front channel. Breathing deeply opens the back channel. Energy goes up the back and down the front.

Here's a book on the meditation, the small universe, or micro cosmic orbit -

https://www.amazon.com/Awaken-Healing-Energy-Through-Tao/dp/0943358078/

And do standing meditation too -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7xAtLnDIN0

also try doing the wim hof breathing method once or twice a day. Hold breath of the last EXHALE, not inhale -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzCaZQqAs9I

See how he focuses on the body?

Sorry to hear that you are suffering and can't get proper help now. I also suffer from 'the tyranny of the should' since childhood, to a point, just like you described: "zero ability to get any pleasure from anything I should do". Getting into therapy helps, 3 time a week for me for the last 2.5 years.

But if you don't have access the therapy or analysis, here is my two-cents :

I have find reading these two book from Karen Horney help me to gain some perspective :

Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Towards Self-Realization ( this one also got an audio book version, if you like being read to.)

https://www.amazon.com/Neurosis-Human-Growth-Struggle-Self-Realization/dp/0393307751

Her other book Self-Analysis could also be helpful, if you want to attempt to do some work on one's own https://openlibrary.org/books/OL1095974M/Self-analysis

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Reich and Lowen both regretted their work on character structure later in their lives. For good reason; spend time with some modern practitioners of their work and you'll see the problems with character analysis. Even Bob Glazer at the Florida Bioenergetics institute did a study on character analysis and the results weren't good. source.

The problems in short: 1) too much room for countertransference when the therapist tries to fit their client into a mold of a character instead of understanding the particulars of the client. 2) doesn't hold up to scientific analysis, IMO because people are too complex. Try doing a body reading of a real person based on what is in Reich and Lowen's books. People have a mix of character styles which manifest somatically as a mix and therapists often selectively focus on particular parts of it and come up with an incorrect diagnosis. Glazer's study on bioenergetic therapists diagnosing clients by body reading versus what the clients reported on the MBPA showed no correlation.

Further, a lot of this has devolved into pseudoscience, for example. Note that on the interwebs and in IIBA training they talk about 5 character structures. However, if you do some research in Reich's work, Stephen Johnson's work, Stanley Keleman, etc. you'll find a lot more than 5. Lowen mentions 2 kinds of schizoid in "Betrayal of the Body", barricaded and retreated. There are at least 2 varities of oral, a whole spectrum of narcissism per Lowen, the "Limb" character, the symbiotic character. Again, people are a mix of all those so good luck in diagnosing a person as one of them.

Reich's ideas about muscular armoring seem to have some merit. People do unconsciously hold tension to stop feelings. Holding a posture in that way affects a person's perception of the world. See ASU's embodied cognition lab's publications for data about this.

One big difference between Reich and Freud that causes much disagreement is utopianism. Freud was not a utopian, and understood that often the best a person can hope for in therapy is to contain the insanity stemming from developmental psychic injury. Reich believed it was possible to heal completely and thus reach a sort of utopia defined by full orgastic potency. You can see the effects of this in the descendants of Reich's work: Perls and Esalen, Osho as in "Wild Wild Country," a kind of cultish religious devotion to achieving utopia. It is impossible to achieve and refusing to accept that (and the grief and terror that comes with it) leads to cultish devotion and destructiveness.

Also see "Century of the Self" part 3 to see how Reich's work has led to a lot of our current political and societal insanity: embracing raw emotional catharsis around anger and lashing out leads to a kind of narcissism and psychopathy without surrendering to the underlying pain which drives it. Although honestly I think Lowen is more responsible for this due to his narcissistic approach to the work than Reich was. Nowadays Levine and Berceli seem much more on the right path, taking a more gentle and honest approach to surrendering to suffering instead of making a lot of noise.

Overall the science of somatic psychotherapy needs to make more progress for aspects of Reich's work to gain wider acceptance. Thankfully science seems to be making a lot of progress towards that end. But still, there is a difference between developmental and clinical understanding. Muscular armoring seems to be a valid concept, but there is a big question of how do therapists work with that? Reich had patients lay down (infatilized), used strong physical interventions like deep tissue massage to break the blockages. That can be very traumatizing as the healing comes from the therapist's thoughts about what should happen instead of following the client's somatic process. I like Berceli's approach of activating the relaxation response in the nervous system to soften the muscular blockages because it allows the client's process to unfold in a respectful way.

There is a wealth of literature on grief therapy. Edgar N. Jackson (Understanding Grief : Its Roots, Dynamics, and Treatment, 1977, here) gives a thorough theoretical account of the problem. I haven't read it, but it seems good.

Donovan J. Ochs (Consolatory Rhetoric) takes a historical perspective. He says:

>Restricting this book to the classical practices of the Greeks and Romans allows the interested reader to gain an historic vantage point from which to begin appreciating, recognizing, and interacting with present day symbolic behaviors of consolation. Indeed, as later chapters will suggest, many of the symbolic languages used in Greco-Roman funeral rites continue to be used in Western societies...

Fred Pine's 1988 paper, "The Four Psychologies of Psychoanalysis and their Place in Clinical Work" is a great place to start learning about some basic schools of thought within psychoanalysis (check here for a summary).

Learning Psychotherapy by Hilde Bruch is a slim, but powerful text that is less jargon and more about the soul of listening and practicing as an analytic therapist.

Jonathan Shedler has a number of articles available for free, including one that traces the history of psychoanalysis (and how the term psychodynamic came to be).

Hello there. As an autistic person well versed in psychoanalysis, I am somewhat skeptical concerning its usefulness regarding autism. I won't discount the recommendations made by others here, but I would like to recommend a book that may be helpful, although it is not psychoanalytic.

https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Persons-Autism-Shannon-Roches/dp/0692010556

I disagree entirely with what another commenter said regarding ABA. From my perspective, it is a dubious practice to say the very least. Read this paper regarding the topic.

https://kar.kent.ac.uk/69268/

Heck yeah they did! If you're a Horney fan you'd love this biography of her.

Maybe check out David Wallin's Attachment in Psychotherapy (link below). He isn't an analyst, but is drawing on analysts like John Bowlby and Peter Fonagy to write about attachment and addressing it in psychotherapy and sees the reflective function or mentalizing of psychoanalysis and Fonagy's mentalization therapy to be closely related and complementary to meditation.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1593854560/

Vienna Triangle is a great read. It provides some historical fiction background about Freud and his followers and is also well written.

http://www.amazon.com/Vienna-Triangle-Brenda-Webster/dp/0916727505

https://www.amazon.com/Freud-Beyond-History-Psychoanalytic-Thought/dp/0465014054

https://www.amazon.com/Psychotherapy-Human-Science-Daniel-Burston/dp/0820703788