Quotes from Christopher Bollas

Past and history are not the same. Past is what happened. It consists of events that affected the patient's self, some of which he can remember, but the most he is having trouble remembering. History is transforming the past to a story that the person tells himself. Sometimes, the story stems from the past, but even the most sincere patient's history is more like a myth. (Translated from the Hebrew edition).

The aesthetic moment constitutes this deep rapport between subject and object

But the United States lost more than its innocence in the 1960s. Its moral deterioration constituted one of the most catastrophic collective mental breakdowns the world had ever witnessed.

Historian and psychoanalyst are experienced in the discovery of things done in the past. They know how to find hidden details, but once they are brought into the light of day, these details, although of course subject to interpretation, are too polysemous to stay in any one subjectivity's perspective. The discoveries – when true ones – displace the finder.

The schizophrenic position is one where a self's embedment in the solace of the quotidian is breached, and consciousness is confronted with both the complexities of thought processes and the raw materials of unconscious function.

It is of interest that from the seventeenth century the word 'vicious' was used to describe a fault in logic, when a conclusion was realized by false means of reasoning. Webster's third definition of the vicious circle cites this fault in logic: 'an argument which is invalid because its conclusion rests upon a premise which itself depends on the conclusion.

There is an ethics of perception. Theories are not simply forms of perception. When practised they become ethical decisions.

Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images,' wrote Cocteau.