Selected Writings of W. H. Gillespie

William Gillespie began his analytic training in Vienna in the early 1930s and has been a pioneer in the study of sexual perversion. His views on female sexuality, instinct theory and regression in old people facing death have been both influential and controversial.

This first edited collection of twelve of Gillespie’s key papers will provide a welcome source of reference for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in training and practice. In a specially written overview, Charles Socarides, an eminent psychoanalyst in the field of perversion and its treatment, shows how Gillespie’s ideas influenced his own contributions and affected the field as a whole.

The editor, Michael Sinason, contributes an eloquent biographical introduction, tracing the early influences in Gillespie’s life which led to his celebrated role as a tactful and trusted adviser in negotiating the relationship between the International Psychoanalytical Association and the British Psycho-Analytical Society.