Ronald Britton is a well-known international psychoanalytic writer who has lectured widely in Europe and North and South America. He is a former President of the British Psychoanalytical Society and a Vice-President of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). He has a predominantly clinical approach but also a special interest in the relationship of psychoanalysis to literature, philosophy and theology. He was given the IPA Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement in 2013 and the Sigourney Award for Outstanding Psychoanalytic Contributions in 2014.

• Preface -- Sex and Death -- Hysteria (I): Anna O -- Hysteria (II): Sabina Spielrein -- Hysteria (III): the erotic countertransference -- The female castration complex: Freud’s big mistake? -- The Ego and the Superego -- The unconscious in practice -- The concept of the ego -- Emancipation from the superego -- The ego-destructive superego -- Humour and the superego -- Narcissism -- Narcissism and narcissistic disorders -- Narcissistic problems in sharing space

'Ronald Britton's papers over the past fifteen years or so have been beacons of clarity and creativity. He has reformulated Kleinian thinking (as far as I am concerned) in the same paradigm shift way that Bion did forty years ago. I have learnt more from his writings than any other member of our Society writing today.'- Peter Fonagy, Professor of Psychoanalysis, University College, London'When Britton applies psychoanalysis to literature or uses literature to illustrate psychoanalytic concepts, both fields benefit from the encounter...Britton achieves a depth and clarity in the application of psychoanalytic ideas to the realm of poetry and biography that is rarely equaled.'- Howard Levine, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association