From childhood onwards, humans use their environment's responses to construct models or schemata to link feelings and impulses with actions and effects. If the environment during those formative years is unreliable, frustrating, or violating, the construction of those internal models can be disrupted and create a disjointed perception of the world, where violence is the only way to feel strong or good about oneself. Before and After Violence explores the complex network of experiences and relationships that contribute to both the origins and consequences of violence, starting in the early stages of life and compounding over time. The contributors to this collection examine the different settings in which violence takes place, look at the variables that propel its occurrence in local and global instances, and depict how each can be traced back to profound feelings of betrayal, helplessness, and anger that manifest in the physical discharges of aggression towards a single person or a whole group. Through a psychoanalytic lens, the contributors analyze and explain violence in its many forms, delve into its myriad of causes, as well as offer a variety of solutions that can be applied to various instances of violence whether it be physical or mental, self-directed or other-directed.

In this, the latest in a series of books examining emotional states and psychological life, Salman Akhtar and Aisha Abbasi critically discuss a concept that remains, appropriately perhaps, elusive and hard to define: privacy. Overlapping with ideas of solitude, secrecy, and anonymity, the concept of privacy poses several crucial questions for analysts. How do our ideas of privacy evolve from childhood through adolescence to adulthood, for example, and when does the need for privacy become morbid and psychopathological? How is privacy conceived differently in different cultures and sub-cultures? Investigating the tension between anonymity and self-disclosure, the book also assesses the challenges posed to clinical privacy, as well as the analyst's own privacy, by the impact of social media and the wider digital age. Privacy: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms represents an important contribution to psychoanalytic literature. It will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in practice and training as well as to researchers interested in the concept of privacy from across the applied and social sciences and the humanities.

In this, the latest in a series of books examining emotional states and psychological life, Salman Akhtar and Aisha Abbasi critically discuss a concept that remains, appropriately perhaps, elusive and hard to define: privacy. Overlapping with ideas of solitude, secrecy, and anonymity, the concept of privacy poses several crucial questions for analysts. How do our ideas of privacy evolve from childhood through adolescence to adulthood, for example, and when does the need for privacy become morbid and psychopathological? How is privacy conceived differently in different cultures and sub-cultures? Investigating the tension between anonymity and self-disclosure, the book also assesses the challenges posed to clinical privacy, as well as the analyst's own privacy, by the impact of social media and the wider digital age. Privacy: Developmental, Cultural, and Clinical Realms represents an important contribution to psychoanalytic literature. It will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in practice and training as well as to researchers interested in the concept of privacy from across the applied and social sciences and the humanities.

What happens when the outside world enters the psychoanalytic space? In "The Rupture of Serenity: External Intrusions and Psychoanalytic Technique," Aisha Abbasi draws on clinical material to describe some of the dilemmas she has encountered in her work with patients when external factors have entered the treatment frame. She considers analytic dilemmas that range from how to deal with patients unusual requests regarding the conduct of an analytic treatment to the question of how to handle events in the analyst s personal life that, by necessity, must be addressed in the analysis. As a Muslim of Pakistani origin, Abbasi is also able to discuss, frankly and with compassion, the role that ethnic and religious differences between patient and analyst can play in treatment differences that, in the aftermath of 9/11 and the search for and killing of Osama bin Laden, became a palpable presence in her consulting room. Abbasi also explores the deeper meanings of waiting-room interactions and how analysts can view the entrance of the iWorld into the psychoanalytic space: not as an unwelcome third party, but as a tool with great potential. Abbasi shares with us her inner struggles to understand and to keep working analytically. She acknowledges that her ability to do so can be strained when external events give rise to internal destabilization within her. She believes that this type of unexpected internal destabilization within the analyst is not only human and unavoidable, but also necessary and, frequently, therapeutic. The book is deeply rooted in existing analytic literature and will be a useful resource for clinicians at all levels of education and practice. At the same time, it is written without technical jargon, so that the clinical material that forms the backbone of each chapter will be easily accessible to nonclinicians as well who will find it to be a moving and lively account of what goes on in a psychoanalyst s consulting room."