"Midlife" is a concept used everywhere and from many different vertexes, though mostly imprecisely, even within the psychoanalytic paradigm. This book tries to settle its proper meaning through the challenge of laying the foundations for the development of a true psychoanalytic metapsychology for "midlife", something that the editors believe in psychoanalysis was lacking. From this viewpoint, they invited fourteen renowned psychoanalysts to share their ideas about the issue. The outcome of that work is Updating Midlife: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, which, in addition to the various contributions, includes an introductory paper by the editors. This book is a true step forward in the development of a specific metapsychology for "midlife".

The systems approach to the family is based on the assumptions that there is equality between men and women in the family, and that women and men are treated equally in clinical practice. The contributors to this book challenge these hidden assumptions, discussing the issues from both a conceptual and clinical viewpoint. They argue strongly that questions of gender and power should be central to family therapy training and practice.

"Anatomy of Regret" has a highly clinical focus, with cases that illustrate how critical psychic change can emerge from the mourning of the grief of psychic regret. This book highlights the developmental achievement of owning the guilt of aggression, and of tolerating insight into the losses one had produced. The author uses the term psychic regret to capture the essence of the process of facing regret consciously. This is in contrast to the split-off and persecutory dynamics of unconscious guilt. Unconscious guilt exposes itself through visceral and cognitive impingements, which are related to internal world enactments, and it relies on unconscious avoidance of the pain and loss involved in facing psychic regret.Dr. Kavaler-Adler s theory of developmental mourning is illustrated in this book through in-depth lively clinical processes (cases and vignettes). The reader is able to witness how those who have faced consciousness of their resistances to experiences of loss and guilt (as referred to by Melanie Klein in her theory of the depressive position) go through the critical psychological transformation, which allows for authentic psychic change. This is a psychological change that has meaning and meaning creativity within it."Anatomy of Regret" weaves the themes of psychoanalysis in its early days with those of current practice. It simultaneously offers vivid case examples, where theory becomes a retrospective way of organizing the progress in the clinical work, and in the lives of patients. Dr. Kavaler-Adler addresses both theoretical and clinical conundrums, as she offers the opportunity for readers to immerse themselves in the journey from internal emptiness to both internal and external richness."

The main purpose of this book is to look at a range of ubiquitous phenomena that make up our daily life and to ask not so much whether but what psychoanalytic thinking can add to our current understanding of these phenomena. Could there be another layer, below the obvious surface-layer that needs to be explored further? If so, can psychoanalytic light reflect upon and illuminate some of the new contours and shapes perhaps previously not fully seen or appreciated? What interim conclusions can we reach as a result of this reflection upon our modern world? This book is linked to its immediate predecessor, "Psychoanalytic Perspectives on a Turbulent World," but it differs significantly in tone, light and composition. This new book no longer addresses itself to the complex and troubling issues such as war, conflict, the global financial crisis and our struggle with leadership, instead it focuses on the lighter side of life.

This book comprises a collection of the distinguished psychoanalyst Elisabeth Young-Bruehl s papers ranging from Psychoanalysis and Social Democracy, Civilization and its Dream of Contentement, Reflections on Women and Psychoanalysis and Reflections on Psychobiography . Each essay is of value in its own right, and the collection together will be found to make an important contribution to our understanding of the history of psychoanalysis."

"Understanding Religion and Spirituality in Clinical Practice" is a volume in the clinical practice monograph series from the Society of Analytical Psychology. This series is intended primarily for trainees on psychotherapy and psychodynamic counselling courses, and for those who are newly qualified.Here, Margaret Clark considers the difficulties clinicians may encounter when patients talk about God or about their spiritual life, and how necessary it is for therapists to examine their own image of God and their own understanding of spirituality, so that they can distinguish these from those of their patients. She emphasizes how varied are people s images and understanding of what God stands for, and how in healthy development these will change over time.The book demonstrates, through numerous clinical vignettes, how clinicians can understand a patient s talking about religion or about God hearing the voice of God, having a vision of God, or being convinced that God wants them to act in a particular way; or, equally, seeing the Devil.The book differentiates between religion and spirituality, and between religious and spiritual aims and practices. It also distinguishes some mystical and spiritual experiences from those which are considered psychotic.There is reference to major theorists throughout, particularly to Freud, Jung, and Winnicott."

"Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control" is a practical, task-oriented, instructional manual designed to help therapists provide effective treatment for survivors of these most extreme forms of child abuse and mental manipulation.

Even before we think, we use fantasy. Is fantasy the 'mother of all media'? Does fantasy save me from myself? Are there fictions that are real? In The Surface Effect Andre Nusselder examines the space of fantasy between individual 'inner life' and social 'outer life'. Where we assume that fantasy only operates where we float off in imaginary realms, this book shows that we are in it from the beginning. Based on the work of Jacques Lacan, Nusselder elaborates Lacan's theory, showing how the effects of unconscious processes converge in fantasy as our principal medium for self-identity, perception, remembering and intersubjectivity. The human mind is seen as a composite function of language, body and social world, and fantasy is the fundamental process to study this effect. The book is divided into three sections: - The Philosophical Context - Lacan's Theory of Fantasy - Lacan and Philosophy The Surface Effect analyses fantasy as a medium, both creative and protective operating between anxiety and excess. It focuses on the role of fantasy in psychoanalysis, and follows its path towards reflections on mediation and new media. This book will appeal to psychoanalysts, philosophers, cognitive scientists and those studying new media, film, culture and literature. Andre Nusselder is a Dutch philosopher, writer and computer programmer.

What is awareness? How is dreaming different from ordinary awareness? What does mathematics have to do with awareness? Are different kinds of awareness related? "Awareness" is commonly spoken of as "mind, soul, spirit, consciousness, the unconscious, psyche, imagination, self, and other." The Phenomena of Awareness is a study of awareness as it is directly experienced. From the start, Cecile T. Tougas engages the reader in reflective notice of awareness as it appears from moment to moment in a variety of ways. The book draws us in and asks us to focus on the flow of phenomena in living experience, not as a theoretical construct, nor an image, nor a biochemical product, but instead as phases, moments, or parts that cannot exist without one another. Tougas shows how these parts exist in mutual dependence as a continuum of awareness, as the flow of lived time, and how noticing time deepens psychological self-understanding and understanding of another. The Phenomena of Awareness is divided into four parts: * Seeking and Noticing Awareness * Observing and Understanding the Flow of Phenomena * Distinguishing Intentional Acts * Work in Progress Drawing on the work of E. Husserl, G. Cantor and C.G. Jung, this book is an original synthesis of phenomenology, mathematics and psychology that explores awareness and the concept of 'transfinite number'. This book will be of interest to analytical psychologists, philosophers, mathematicians, feminist scholars, humanities teachers and students. Cecile T. Tougas teaches Latin at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, Durham. She taught philosophy at the University of Southern Maine and the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

New Understandings of Twin Relationships takes an experience-based approach to exploring how twin attachment and estrangement are critical to understanding the push and pull of closely entwined personal relationships. Based on the research expertise of each of the authors (all identical twins in their own right), and vignettes from twins across the globe, this book describes the inner workings of the twin-world, showing how the twin-world creates experiences that are often more intense and intricately textured than those in the singleton-world. Chapters debunk myths surrounding twinship and analyze the developmental stages of the twin relationship as well as the effect of being a twin on one's mental health from different perspectives. The authors articulate how attachment, separation anxiety, loneliness, estrangement, and the subjective experience of the twin and non-twin "other" impact behavior, thinking, and feeling. Through its careful study of the many psychological challenges that twins face throughout their lifetime, this text will help psychologists, scholars, clinicians, and twins themselves attain a deeper understanding of all interpersonal relationships.

This inter-disciplinary study examines the theme of consumption in Asian American literature, connection representations of cooking and eating with ethnic identity formation. Using four discrete modes of identification--historic pride, consumerism, mourning, and fusion--Jennifer Ho examines how Asian American adolescents challenge and revise their cultural legacies and experiment with alternative ethnic affiliations through their relationships to food.

The book deals with initial interviews in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, suggesting the idea of special "indicators". These indicators relate to three main areas. Firstly, psychoanalytical understanding of initial interviews to evaluate the patient's suitability for a psychoanalytically based treatment, discussing the dynamics, aims and technique of the interview. Three areas to be explored in the interview are considered: psychopathological data; biographical data, and data arising from the interaction of the patient with the therapist in the interview itself. Secondly, part of the book is devoted to the definition and description of what the author calls "indicators" for the therapist to build a personality profile showing suitability for psychoanalytic treatment. The main theoretical bases of the book are Freud, Klein and Bion. A third part deals with the controversial issue of the differentiation between psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The specificity of psychoanalysis is defined in comparison with psychotherapy. A specific psychoanalytic method and setting may be created as well as a specific psychotherapeutic method and setting.

This book is about children in State care and its title "Waiting to be Found" is derived from an observation about such children by the child psychotherapist Hamish Canham. In one of his early papers Canham wrote that children s homes often reminded him of "station waiting rooms with children waiting to move on to their next placement and staff waiting for the next shift, or working as a residential social worker in order to get experience before moving on to do something else or further training. This book takes his comment about waiting rooms as its starting point, with each contributor building upon its central implications. The contributors to this book each explore the importance of relationship; whether between child and care system, child and clinician or other practitioner, practitioners with practitioners, or individuals with the organization in which they work. Overall they demonstrate when attention is paid to any one of these relationships this determines emotional-psycho-social success for the child, and how when this attention is missing serious issues arise. As a snapshot view of the way Canham s focus is used today, they show that he was ahead of his time in thinking about the structure and function of what we now recognize as the corporate parent."

Revisits the birth of psychoanalysis from the perspective of trauma. Considers the roles of both Freud and Ferenczi. Revisits some of Freud's most famous cases including the Wolf Man and his involvement with Emma Eckstein.

Psychoanalysis and Toileting is an accessible book that delineates and interprets the psychological meanings of defecating and urinating in everyday life. Paul Marcus' work gives the clinician an in-depth view of an activity that every patient and practitioner engage in and shows how not dealing with toileting in its wide range of social and practical contexts leaves out a huge aspect of the patient's everyday experience. Drawing from psychoanalytic theory and practice, the author discusses such subjects as constipation, diarrhea and irritable bowel syndrome, adult female incontinence, toilet cursing, public toilet graffiti and toilet humor. The book also considers the personal meaning of urinating and defecating as seen in men suffering from an enlarged prostate, in 'excremental assault' in the Nazi concentration camps, and in dreaming. Marcus considers not only what is typically negative about these experiences, but what can be seen as positive in terms of growth and development for the ordinary person. The book is illustrated throughout with clinical vignettes and observations taken from the author's private practice. Psychoanalysis and Toileting will be a key text for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in practice and in training. It will also be relevant to other mental health practitioners.

The first book to provide an accessible introduction to neuropsychoanalysis. Covers the theoretical foundations and history of the field, along with an overview of current models relevant to psychoanalysis. It presents the state-of-the-art in neuropsychoanalytic research and theory as well as suggestions for future research and clinical-therapeutic implications.

Psychoanalytic infant observation is frequently used in training psychoanalytic psychotherapists and allied professionals, but increasingly its value as a research method is being recognised, particularly in understanding developmental processes in vulnerable individuals and groups. This book explores the scope of this approach and discusses its strengths and limitations from a methodological and philosophical point of view.

Infant Observation and Research uses detailed case studies to demonstrate the research potential of the infant observation method. Divided into three sections this book covers

• infant observation as part of the learning process
• how infant observation can inform understanding and influence practice
• psychoanalytic infant observation and other methodologies.

Throughout the book, Cathy Urwin, Janine Sternberg and their contributors introduce the reader to the nature and value of psychoanalytic infant observation and its range of application. This book will therefore interest a range of mental health practitioners concerned with early development and infants' emotional relationships, as well as academics and researchers in the social sciences and humanities.

This edited volume provides a critical history of psychoanalysis in Brazil. Written mainly by Brazilian historians and practitioners of psychoanalysis, the chapters address some central questions about psychoanalysis' social role. How did psychoanalysis develop and flourish in a society in which modernisation was accompanied by inequality, authoritarianism and violence? How did psychoanalysis survive in Brazil alongside censorship and repression? Through a variety of lenses, the contributors demonstrate how psychoanalysis in Brazil presented itself as progressive and transformative and maintained this self-image even as it developed institutional structures that reproduce the authoritarianism of the wider society. This novel work offers rich conceptual and practical insights for academic researchers and practitioners of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and addresses methodological questions of concern to academics working across the social sciences. Crucially, it also outlines a distinctive vision of psychoanalysis seen through a Brazilian lens, which will be of interest to readers seeking to confront the Eurocentric and North American bias of much psychoanalytic debate.

2013 Goethe Award Winner! This is the first book of its kind to offer a sustained critique of contemporary psychoanalytic thought favoring relational, postmodern, and intersubjective perspectives, which largely define American psychoanalysis today. Conundrums turns an eye toward the philosophical underpinnings of contemporary theory; its theoretical relation to traditional psychoanalytic thought; clinical implications for therapeutic practice; political and ethical ramifications of contemporary praxis; and its intersection with points of consilience that emerge from these traditions. Central arguments and criticisms advanced throughout the book focus on operationally defining the key tenets of contemporary perspectives; the seduction and ambiguity of postmodernism; the question of selfhood and agency; illegitimate attacks on classical psychoanalysis; the role of therapeutic excess; contemporary psychoanalytic politics; and the question of consilience between psychoanalysis as a science versus psychoanalysis as part of the humanities. The historical criticisms against psychoanalysis are further explored in the context of the current philosophical-scientific binary that preoccupies the field.

1. A unique look into how Freud's own adolescence informed his own work on adolescent psychoanalysis, amongst other theories; 2. Includes excerpts of letters written by Freud himself to offer a personal insight into his thought process; 3. Written in an accessible and informative way, this book will invite readers from the general public as much as it will appeal to analysts;

This book sees Freud as one of the last great exponents of Enlightenment rationalism; yet he also forms part of modernism—which shattered traditional forms in art—and he leads forward to certain postmodern ideas. The book examines some of Freud's themes that remain challenging and relevant today—for example, psychoanalysis as a form of narrative-construction, the creative nature of memory, the revolutionary nature of the knowledge gained through psychotherapy, and unconscious, which subverts any notion of stable human identity.

This book puts psychological trauma at its center. Using psychoanalysis, it assesses what was lost, how it was lost and how the loss is compulsively repeated over generations. There is a conceptualization of this trauma as circular. Such a situation makes it stubbornly persistent. It is suggested that central to the system of slavery was the separating out of procreation from maternity and paternity. This was achieved through the particular cruelties of separating couples at the first sign of loving interest in each other; and separating infants from their mothers. Cruelty disturbed the natural flow of events in the mind and disturbed the approach to and the resolution of the Oedipus Complex conflict. This is traced through the way a new kind of family developed in the Caribbean and elsewhere where slavery remained for hundreds of years.

This book has two main aims: first, to provide a rare, detailed description of the use of a psychoanalytically informed, reflexive research method to achieve an in-depth understanding of social phenomena. Stressing the 'both/and' nature of psycho-social research, it demonstrates that utilizing psychoanalytic and sociological theories as complementary frameworks of understanding can enable researchers to discover aspects of human experience that ordinarily remain outside conscious awareness. Second, the book throws some much needed light onto the complex, intrapsychic and interpersonal influences that impact upon military wives who accompany members of the Armed Forces to postings overseas. It describes the personal losses that these women commonly sustain each time they relocate, which inevitably evoke mourning, depressive anxiety and related defences. In addition, wives' unwitting collusion with the patriarchal military institution, which fails to recognize them as individuals, further undermines their identities. These largely unconscious emotional upheavals have potentially profound consequences, both for servicemen's wives and for the military itself. The book recommends various policy changes that would result in wives' losses becoming better recognized, enabling them to be worked through more quickly. These arguments are particularly relevant at a time when the military is over-stretched, given that unhappy wives can adversely affect the retention of servicemen.

Freud spoke of the "repudiation of femininity" as being an "underlying bedrock", part of the "enigma" of sexuality. The enigma is not so much the refusal of the feminine dimension as such; it has more to do with rejecting its erotic and genital aspects, as well as its creation through sexual ecstatic pleasure. Equality between the sexes is a legitimate demand in the political, social, and economic spheres, but forming a masculine-feminine relationship as a couple is a creation of the mind, exalting the acknowledgement of the otherness which is part of the difference between the sexes. There is a conflict in woman - and the feminine dimension itself is rooted in it - between a sexuality that demands "defeat" and an ego that abhors this. It is the man's masculine dimension - the antagonist of the phallic one - which creates the feminine dimension in women, by tearing away their defences and generating sexual ecstasy. The quality of the sexual, emotional, and social relationship that is set up between a man and a woman bears witness to the "work of civilization" (Kulturarbeit).

The re-issuing of the four volumes of Heinz Kohut s writings is a major publishing event for psychoanalysts who are interested in both the theoretical and the therapeutic aspects of psychoanalysis. These volumes contain Kohut s pre-self psychology essays as well as those he wrote in order to continue to expand on his groundbreaking ideas, which he presented in "The Analysis of the Self; The Restoration of the Self"; and in "How Does Analysis Cure?"These volumes of "The Search for the Self" permit the reader to understand not only the above three basic texts of psychoanalytic self psychology more profoundly, but also to appreciate Kohut s sustained openness to further changes to dare to present his self psychology as in continued flux, influenced by newly emerging empirical data of actual clinical practice. The current re-issue of the four volumes of "The Search for the Self" would assure that the younger generation of psychoanalysts would be exposed to a clinical theory that could contribute greatly to solving the therapeutic dilemmas facing psychoanalysis today. From the Foreword by Paul OrnsteinVolumes 1 and 2 of "The Search for the Self" encompass Heinz Kohut's selected writings and letters from 1950 to 1978. Volumes 3 and 4 continue with the further collection of his selected writings and letters (published as well as previously unpublished) from 1978 until his untimely death in 1981."