David Gutmann is a highly successful consultant to leading institutions and organizations. In this enriching and challenging dialogue with the Italian journalist Oscar Iarussi, he brings his passion for life and unceasing search for true awareness for all to focus on the innovative principle of transformation. This book talks about transformation in a two-voice encounter resulting in a thought-provoking and rewarding read for laymen and academics alike. The tone of the account is philosophical, whilst being light and dense." I appreciated his approach of simultaneously mingling his thoughts about his work and his private life. This manifested that he was applying to himself what he was professing to his clients: know how to manage the inescapable uniqueness of your personality, at work as well as in your daily life." -- B Lescoeur, Chairman of London Electricity Group (1999-2002), from the Preface"For him it is essential that the interpretation must transform understanding into action, hence his coining of the word Transform-Action. In search for truth we live in a continuous struggle to transform the zig-zag pathway. Gutmann calls "zig" the progression, which we should strive to increase thereby decreasing the "zag," which refers to regression." -- Estela V Welldon from the Foreword'This book is an encounter with the Other... The book is written for every student of life and organisations, for every professional and leader struggling with the sweet turbulence, the zigging and zagging, of transformation.' -- Beverley Malone

This book is based on the work done by a group of British and Italian psychoanalysts who have been meeting twice yearly since 2003 to study clinically the relationship between the mind and the body of their patients. The analytical dyad became the focus of a dialectical movement between body and mind and between subject and object. Containing contributions from a range of distinguished British and Italian analysts, this book covers such key topics as somatic symptoms, the embodied unconscious, bodily expressions of affect, sexuality, violence, self-harm, suicide attempts, hypochondria, hysteria, anorexia and bulimia, and splits and fragmentation associated with the body. The theoretical understanding is inspired by various psychoanalytic theoreticians, including Freud, M. Klein, Winnicott and Bion and their theories on sexuality, infantile sexuality, libido, aggressiveness, death instinct, Oedipus complex and mother-child relationship. Offering new advances in theoretical thinking and practical applications for clinical work, this book will be essential for all psychoanalysts and mental health clinicians interested in understanding serious mental disturbance that is represented in the body.

"Coles' book starts from the claim that traditionally psychoanalysis, in stressing the relations of conflict between children and parents, has tended to overlook and displace the co-operative relations between siblings. This is a claim clearly worth investigating." -- Professor Richard Wollheim

* Presents Fanon's theories and insights in a manner that is easy to understand for students * Highlights the various ways that multi-disciplinary forms of psychological analysis can be applied to the critique of contemporary forms of racism * Seamlessly ties together critical and contemporary scholarship from and about Fanon that introduces his analyses of racism and racialized subjectivity in an accessible manner

The quest to comprehend the essence of human nature is as old as the capacity for reflective thought. In this provocative book, Dr. Michael Robbins proposes a new approach that draws upon psychoanalysis but is shaped by awareness of the limits that the particular circumstances of historical epoch, Western culture, male gender, and modal population from which psychoanalysis was derived imposed on its modernist claims to being a universal theory. Dr. Robbins addresses these limitations from the perspective of philosophy of science, focusing on the paradigm shift from logical positivism to the postmodern emphasis on pluralism and on relativistic, contextual, evanescent knowledge. He examines the implications of this shift for neuroscience, psychoanalysis, gender studies, anthropology, and sociology. After considering whether typical personality has changed over time, he studies the cross-cultural diversity of human nature, the relationship of gender to personality, the spectrum of personality variability within Western culture, and the relationship of the contextual embeddedness of the conceiver to his or her theory. He then proposes a dialectical conception of personality based on systems and chaos theories that respects its multiple guises and circumstantial richness of content without abandoning the quest for universal principles.

Drawing on the writings of Freud, Fairbairn, Klein, Sullivan, and Winnicott, Spezzano offers a radical redefinition of the analytic process as the intersubjective elaboration and regulation of affect. The plight of analytic patients, he holds, is imprisonment within crude fantasy elaborations of developmentally significant feeling states. Analytic treatment fosters the patient's capacity to keep alive in consciousness, and hence reflect on, these previously warded-off affective states; it thereby provides a second chance to achieve competence in using feeling states to understand the self within its relational landscape.

There is a moment at every level of psychological development in which the mind comes face to face with a challenge. This moment can last for a literal moment in time or it can extend for years becoming the leading edge of development. Disordered Thought and Development: Chaos to Organization in the Moment explores the processes around that moment. The exploration begins with a psychotic analysand in which these processes loudly reveal themselves. From there, the exploration extends to a young child with pervasive developmental disorder and then on to four other cases, each revealing the elements and dynamics necessary for development to proceed. One of the elements includes the vicissitudes of affect from its raw, unprocessed form that is initially experienced as chaotic bodily sensations without meaning to one that carries meaning, purpose, and direction. Another element is the organizational capacities that help to solve a problem that has never been solved before. The dynamics of the moment can be understood within the context of non-linear systems theory as the mind is conceptualized as a self-organizing system in the process of evolving. This book provides clinicians with a touchstone that can help guide development of all the individuals they are called on to assist whether they are anxious, obsessional, psychotic or neurotic, and whether they are children, adolescents, or adults."

Accessibly written introduction to a new analytic tradition. Discusses the tensions arising between this emerging school of thought and the existing body of psychoanalytic knowledge. Explores the unique ways in which this approach refers to and understands core analytic issues such as transference, interpretation, psychopathology and psychic development

The long-awaited publication of C.G. Jung's Red Book in October 2009 was a signal event in the history of analytical psychology. Hailed as the most important work in Jung's entire corpus, it is as enigmatic as it is profound. Reading The Red Book by Sanford L. Drob provides a clear and comprehensive guide to The Red Book's narrative and thematic content, and details The Red Book's significance, not only for psychology but for the history of ideas.

A volume in the Psychoanalytic Ideas Series, published for the Institute of Psychoanalysis by Karnac. Here, shame and jealousy are examined as hidden turmoils; as basic human feelings found in everyone but often suppressed and neglected. An unfulfilled need, unanswered plea for help, and failure to connect with and understand other people are all underlying causes for shame and feeling inadequate. The author argues that feelings of shame form an intrinsic part of the analytic encounter but 'astonishingly, this shame-laden quality of the psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic setting is rarely addressed. This lucidly written and much-needed volume explores the profound effects shame and jealousy can have on self-esteem and how this can eventually lead to a chronic condition.

This book brings the insights of psychoanalysis to bear on drama in the western dramatic tradition. Plays which are discussed in detail include works by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov, Wilde, and Beckett among others. The authors seek to show that the subtle understanding of conscious and unconscious emotions achieved by psychoanalytic practice can bring new ways of understanding classic works of drama. The argument of the book, set out in its introduction and exemplified in its discussion of individual dramatists and plays, is that western drama has represented the central tensions of societies as crises in the relationships of gender and generation, through dramatic explorations of the inner life of families. This is the common theme which links the book's analysis of Medea, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream amongst others. The value of this book lies in the originality of its analysis of individual plays, and the subtlety with which it brings psychoanalytic and sociological insights together.

This book uses clear language, modern contexts and key psychoanalytic concepts to exemplify how Sigmund Freud's thinking and legacy is directly relevant to contemporary therapists. Interweaving theory with history, Freudian Thought for the Contemporary Clinician allows readers to take a walk in Freud's shoes, offering a new framework for understanding his arcane language and the cultural mores of the early 20th century. Robert Mendelsohn explores topics including sexuality and gender, racial injustice and cultural differences with direct reference to Freud's cases, demonstrating how traditional psychoanalytic ideas may inform solutions to issues we face today. Featuring clinical examples and philosophical explorations delivered in an accessible style, Freudian Thought for the Contemporary Clinician will be a key text for psychoanalytic clinicians in practice and in training. It will also be of great interest to academics and scholars of psychoanalytic studies, the history of psychology and the history of ideas.

Based on the psychology of Carl Jung, this illuminating new book invites coaches to extend their toolbox with deep, creative, and efficient professional methods that derive from a new perspective on coaching. In using the unconscious archetypes as a practical active psychological database for change, the Jungian coach can contribute significant modification in the coachee's expected behavior. Jungian Coaching can be applied in evaluating the coachee, the team, and the corporation. This book translates Jungian psychology into simple comprehensive concepts. Each chapter translates theoretical concepts and rationale to thepractice of coaching. Illustrated with practical examples from the corporate world and life coaching, it offers Jungian Coaching tools and techniques. By integrating the Gestalt psychology principle of the "here and now" into Jungian concepts, the author develops a new coaching tool that enables an activation of archetypes as a useful and empowering coaching experience. A valuable introductory resource for all those involved in coaching relationships, this book can empower coachees and serve as a compass for personal growth. It will be of great interest to practicing coaches, executives, human resource managers, consultants, and psychotherapists.

Contents:
Volume I: Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice
1. Jacques-Alain Miller Paradigms of Jouissance, lacanian Ink 17 pp. 10-47 [2000]
2. Jacqueline Rose The Imaginary, in Colin McCabe, ed., The Talking Cure pp. 132-161 [St. Martin's Press, 1981]
3. Martin Thom The Unconscious Structured as a Language, in Colin McCabe, ed., The Talking Cure pp. 1-44 [St. Martin's Press, 1981]
4. Moustapha Safouan In Praise of Hysteria, in Stuart Schneiderman, ed., Returning to Freud pp. 55-60 [Yale UP, 1980]
5. Gerard Wajeman The Hysteric's Discourse Hystoria (Lacan Study Notes: Special Issue) pp. 1-22 [1988]
6. Michel Silvestre Conducting the Hysteric's Cure Hystoria (Lacan Study Notes: Special Issue) pp. 23-33 [1988]
7. Darian Leader, Why Do Women Write More Letters Than They Post pp. 123-159 [Faber and Faber, 1996]
8. Charles Mehlman On Obsessional Neurosis, in Stuart Schneiderman, ed., Returning to Freud pp. 130-138 [Yale UP, 1980]
9. Jacques-Alain Miller H20: Suture in Obsessionality Hystoria (Lacan Study Notes: Special Issue) pp. 34-44 [1988]
10. Octave Mannoni Je sais bien, mais quand meme Clefs pour l'imaginaire pp. 9-33 [Editions du Seuil, 1968]
11. Jean Clavreuil The Perverse Couple, in Stuart Schneiderman, ed., Returning to Freud pp. 215-233 [Yale UP, 1980]
12. Jacques-Alain Miller On Perversion, in Richard Feldstein, Bruce Fink, Maire Jaanus, eds., Reading Seminars I and II pp. 306-320 [SUNY Press, 1996]
13. Serge Leclaire, Psychoanalyzing: On the Order of the Unconscious and the Practice of the Letter, Chapters 5 and 7 [Stanford UP, 1998]
14. Jean Laplanche Interpretation between Determinism and Hermeneutics: a Restatement of the Problem Essays on Otherness pp. 138-165 [Routledge, 1999]
15. Anne Dunand The End of Analysis, in Richard Feldstein, Bruce Fink, Maire Jaanus, eds., Reading Seminar XI pp. 243-256 [SUNY Press, 1995]
16. Kirsten Hyldgaard The Cause of the Subject as an Ill-timed Accident: Lacan, Sartre and Aristotle Umbr(a): A Journal of the Unconscious pp. 67-80 [2000]
17. Bruce Fink The Subject and the Other's Desire, in Richard Feldstein, Bruce Fink, Maire Jaanus, eds., Reading Seminars I and II pp. 76-97 [SUNY Press, 1996]
18. Jean-Claude Milner The Doctrine of Science Umbr(a): A Journal of the Unconscious 2000: Science and Truth pp. 33-63
Volume II: Philosophy
19. Mladen Dolar Cogito as the Subject of the Unconscious, in Slavoj Zizek, ed., Cogito and the Unconscious pp. 11-40 [Duke UP, 1998]
20. Alain Badiou Descartes/Lacan Umbr(a): A Journal of the Unconscious: On Badiou, pp. 13-16, 1996
21. Bernard Baas Le desir pur Ornicar?, No 43, pp. 56-91 [1987]
22. Alenka Zupancic The Subject of the Law, in Slavoj Zizek, ed., Cogito and the Unconscious pp. 41-73 [Duke UP, 1998]
23. Joan Copjec Euthanasia of Reason Read My Desire: Lacan against the Historicists pp. 201-236 [The MIT Press, 199X]
24. Slavoj Zizek Cogito and the Sexual Difference Tarrying With the Negative pp. 45-80 [Duke UP, 1993]
25. Richard Boothby Figurations of the Objet a, Freud as Philosopher pp. 241-280 [Routledge, 2001]
26. Edward S. Casey and J. Melvin Woody Hegel, Heidegger, Lacan: The Dialectic of Desire, in Joseph H. Smith and William Kerrigan, eds., Interpreting Lacan pp. 75-112 [Yale UP, 1973]
27. Hermann Lang Language and Finitude Language and the Unconscious. Lacan's Hermeneutics of Psychoanalysis pp. 135-177 [Humanities Press, 1999]
28. Gilles Deleuze The Logic of Sense pp. 27-48 [Columbia UP, 1990]
29. Barbara Johnson The Frame of Reference: Poe, Lacan, Derrida, in John P. Muller and William J. Richardson, eds., The Purloined Poe pp. 457-505 [Johns Hopkins UP, 1988]
30. Jean-Claude Milner, For the Love of Language, Chapters 5, 6 and 7 [MacMillan, 19XX]
Volume III: Society, Politics, Ideology
31. Fredric Jameson Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan The Ideologies of Theory. Essays 1971-1986, Vol. 1 pp. 75-115 [Minnesota UP, 1988]
32. Louis Althusser Freud and Lacan Writings on Psychoanalysis pp. 13-32 [Columbia UP, 1996]
33. Mladen Dolar Lacan and the Uncanny October 58 pp. 5-23 [1991]
34. Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen The Freudian Subject: From Politics to Ethics The Emotional Tie pp. 15-35 [Stanford UP, 1992]
35. Gilbert D. Chaitin The Subject and the Symbolic Order: Historicity, Mathematics, Poetry Rhetoric and Culture in Lacan pp. 195-242 [Cambridge UP, 1996]
36. Henry Krips, Fetish: An Erotics of Culture pp. 73-117 [Cornell UP, 1999]
37. Eric Santner Freud's Moses and the Ethics of Nomothropic Desire, in Renata Salecl, ed., Sexuation pp. 57-105 [Duke UP, 2000]
38. Alain Grosrichard The Case of Polyphemus, in Slavoj Zizek, ed., Cogito and the Unconscious pp. 117-148 [Duke UP, 1998]
39. Miran Bozovic An Utterly Dark Spot An Utterly Dark Spot pp. 95-120 [The University of Michigan Press, 2000]
40. Yannis Stavrakakis Encircling the Political Lacan And the Political pp. 71-98 [Routledge, 2000]
41. Ernesto Laclau Why do Empty Signifiers Matter to Politics? Emancipation(s), pp. 36-46 [Verso Books, 1995]
42. Yannis Stavrakakis Laclau With Lacan Umbr(a): A Journal of the Unconscious pp. 134-153 [2000]
43. Slavoj Zizek Che vuoi? The Sublime Object of Ideology pp. 87-129 [Verso Books, 1989]
44. Robert Pfaller Negation and Its Reliabilities: An Empty Subject for Ideology?, in Slavoj Zizek, ed., Cogito and the Unconscious pp. 225-246 [Duke UP, 1998]
45. Jerry Aline Flieger Is Oedipus On-line?, in Pretexts: studies in writing and culture, Vol. 6 No 1, pp. 81-94 [1997]
Volume IV: Culture
46. Jacques-Alain Miller Suture Screen Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 24-34 [1977/78]
47. Alain Badiou Complementary Note On a Contemporary Usage Of Frege Umbr(a): A Journal of the Unconscious 2000: Science and Truth pp. 107-113 [Buffalo]
48. Jean-Pierre Oudart Cinema and Suture Screen Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 35-47 [1977/78]
49. Stephen Heath Notes on Suture Screen Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 48-76 [1977/78]
50. Alain Badiou What Is Love?, in Renata Salecl, ed., Sexuation pp. 263-281 [Duke UP, 2000]
51. Alenka Zupancic The Case of the Perforated Sheet, in Renata Salecl, ed., Sexuation pp. 282-296 [Duke UP, 2000]
52. Mladen Dolar The Object Voice, in Renata Salecl and Slavoj Zizek, eds., Gaze and Voice as Love Objects pp. 7-31 [Duke UP, 1996]
53. Michel Chion, The Voice in Cinema pp. 17-57 [Columbia UP, 1999]
54. Mary Ann Doane Sublimation and the Psychoanalysis of the Aesthetic Femmes Fatales pp. 249-267 [Routledge, 1991]
55. Pascal Bonitzer Hitchcockian Suspense, in Slavoj Zizek, ed., Everything you always wanted to know about Lacan (but were afraid to ask Hitchcock) pp. 13-30 [Verso Books, 1992]
56. Richard Maltby A Brief Romantic Interlude, in David Bordwell and Noel Carroll, eds., Post-Theory pp. 13-30 [The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996]
57. Gerard Wajcman The Absence of the 20th Century Lacanian Ink 18 pp. 60-79 [2001]
58. Michel Poizat, The Angel's Cry: Beyond the Pleasure Principle in Opera, Part II, chapter 2 ("Entre parole, cri et silence") [Cornell UP, 1992]
59. Jacqueline Rose Daddy The Haunting of Sylvia Plath pp. 205-238 [Virago, 1991]
60. Alenka Zupancic Lacan's Heroines: Antigone and Sygne de Coufontaine New Formations, No. 35, pp. 108-121

Steeped in Lacanian theory, this book is the first of its kind to present a longitudinal approach to the study of hysteria. In these 21 seminars Dr Melman leads us from the first records of hysteria to Freud's major discovery of the principal concepts of trauma, incompatibility, repression and the unconscious. Peppered with invaluable clinical examples, the author guides readers through difficult concepts as he links hysteria to the birth of psychoanalysis itself, and demonstrates how the reader may become implicated in this discourse. Capturing Melman's indomitable spirit, Studies on Hysteria Revisited will be an important read for graduate students, clinicians, and those in psychoanalytic formation.

Interviews with a broad range of senior analysts. International selection of interviewees. Personal questions providing unique insight into their motivations and career experiences.

Of all the books of the Bible few have had more resonance for modern readers than the Book of Job. For a world that has witnessed great horrors, Job's cries of despair and incomprehension are all too recognizable. The visionary psychotherapist Carl Gustav Jung understood this and responded with this book, in which he set himself face-to-face with "the unvarnished spectacle of divine savagery and ruthlessness".;Jung perceived in the hidden recesses of the human psyche the cause of a crisis that plagues modern humanity and leaves the individual, like Job, isolated and bewildered in the face of impenetrable fortune. By correlating the transcendental with the unconscious, Jung, writing not as a biblical scholar but "as a layman and physician who has been privileged to see deeply into the psychic life of many people", offers a way for every reader to come to terms with the divine darkness which confronts each individual.

Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical psychotherapy remain an unparalleled source of insights into the unconscious determinants and dimensions of psychological suffering. However, there is a worldwide debate as to the most appropriate ways in which to carry out research into psychopathology and treatment, which remains true to the essence of the discipline. This volume presents the rationales, methods and findings of some of the main empirical studies. The methodological and scientific problems, as well as some sophisticated solutions, are illustrated with concrete research examples. The distinguished authors of this volume share the common aim to bridge the gap between practicing therapists and researchers.

Robert Langs had a substantial impact on American psychoanalysis in the 1970s and 1980s-both Freudian and Jungian -due to his development of what he termed "the adaptive paradigm." According to Langs, the psychoanalytic tradition had vastly underestimated the clinical importance of adaptation, both the role adaptive problems play in psychological and emotional conflicts as well as the significance adaptation has for understanding unconscious communications in clinical practice. In spite of Langs' impact on the psychoanalysis and analytical psychology of his time, there have been few psychoanalytic studies either of adaptation or of Langs' adaptive paradigm since the 1980s and no attempts to link Langs' thinking with that of Carl Jung. Adaption and Psychotherapy gives a concentrated but complete picture of Langs' adaptive clinical theory and also expands Langs' treatment of adaptation by examining Jung's theory of adaptation. Jung offers an extended treatment of adaptation in his treatise On Psychic Energy. However, understanding Jung's theory of adaptation is difficult, due to Jung's having two diverse and virtually exclusive meanings of "adaptation" in his writings, rendering his thought on adaptation somewhat obscure and, at times, inconsistent. The book differentiates those diverse meanings of adaptation and articulates Jung's positive and clinical understanding of adaptation in a way that allows comparison to Langs' adaptive paradigm as well as a creative synthesis of the two approaches. The result is a development of Langs' adaptive paradigm and an expansion of clinical theory and technique that is valuable for both Freudian and Jungian analysts.

In this book, fourteen Lacanian psychoanalysts from Italy and France present how they listen and understand clinical questions, and how they operate in session. More than a theoretical 'introduction to Lacan', this book stems from clinical issues, is written by practicing psychoanalysts and not only presents theoretical concepts, but also their use in practice. Psychoanalytic listening is the leitmotif of this book. How, and what, does a psychoanalyst listen to/for? How to effectively listen, and thus understand, something from the unconscious? Further, this book examines the evolution of psychic symptoms since Freud's Studies on Hysteria to today, and how the clinical work has changed. It introduces the differences between 'classic' discourses and 'modern' symptoms, with also a spotlight on some transversal issues. Chapters include hysteria, obsessive discourse and phobia, paranoia, panic disorder, anorexia, bulimia, binge-eating and obesity, depressions, addictions, borderline cases, the relationship with the mother, perversion, clinic of the void, and jealousy. Despite possessing the same theoretical reference of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, the contributors of this book belong to different associations and groups, and each of them provides several examples taken from their own practice. Lacanian Psychoanalysis in Practice is of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, students and academics from the international psychoanalytic community.

In this book, Abram proposes and elaborates the dual concept of an intrapsychic surviving and non surviving object and examines how psychic survival-of-the-object places the early m/Other at the centre of the nascent psyche before innate factors are relevant. Abram's clinical-theoretical elaborations advance several of Winnicott's key concepts. Moreover, the clinical illustrations show how her advances arise out of the transference-countertransference matrix of the analyzing situation. Chapter by chapter the reader witnesses the evolution of her proposals that not only enhance an appreciation of Winnicott's original clinical paradigm but also demonstrate how much more there is to glean from his texts especially in the contemporary consulting room. The Surviving Object comprises 8 chapters covering themes such as: the incommunicado self; violation of the self; the paradox of communication; terror at the roots of non survival; an implicit theory of desire; the fear of WOMAN underlying misogyny; the meaning of infantile sexuality; the 'father in the nursing mother's mind' as an 'integrate' in the nascent psyche; formlessness preceding integration; a theory of madness. The volume will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically-informed psychotherapists of all levels who are inspired by clinical psychoanalysis and the study of human nature.

Understanding shame as a relational problem, Shame Matters explores how people, with support, can gradually move away from the relentless cycle of shame and find new and more satisfying ways of relating. Orit Badouk Epstein brings together experts from across the world to explore different aspects of shame from an attachment perspective. The impact of racism and socio-economic factors on the development and experience of shame are discussed and illustrated with clinical narratives. Drawing upon the experience of infant researchers, trauma experts and therapists using somatic interventions, Shame Matters explores and develops understanding of the shameful deflations encountered in the consulting room and describes how new and empowered ways of relating can be nurtured. The book also details attachment-informed research into the experience of shame and outlines how it can be applied to clinical practice. Shame Matters will be an invaluable companion for psychotherapists, clinical psychologists, counsellors, social workers, nurses, and others in the helping professions.

Recognising the contributions of female psychoanalytic pioneers has become very popular in recent years * Thompson's original work is very hard to find and there's little coverage of her in the existing literature * Her ideas have become part of the psychoanalytic mainstream, especially in the US.

Cooper is the acknowledged international expert on Zen and psychoanalysis/psychotherapy * First book to offer an fully integrated mode of Zen and psychoanalysis * Focus on theory and clinical practice

Finding Your Way with Your Baby explores the emotional experience of the baby in the first year and that of the mother, father and other significant adults. This updated edition is informed by latest research in neuroscience, psychoanalysis and infant observation and decades of clinical experience. It also includes important new findings about how the mother's brain undergoes massive restructuring during the transition to parenthood, a phenomenon that has been named 'matrescence.' The authors engage with the difficult emotional experiences that are often glossed over in parenting books - such as bonding, ambivalence about the baby, depression and the emotional turmoil of being a new parent. Acknowledgement and understanding of this darker side of family life offer a sense of relief that can allow parents to harness the power of knowing, owning and sharing feelings to transform situations and break negative cycles and old ways of relating. With real-life examples, the book remains a helpful resource for parents, as well as professionals interested in ideas from psychoanalytic clinical practice including health visitors, midwives, social workers, general practitioners, paediatricians and childcare workers.