AIDS has humbled us. Thus observes editor Mark Blechner in introducing readers to this powerful collection of essays on psychodynamic approaches to AIDS. It is the disease, Blechner tells us, that "has forced us to rethink our relation to sickness and health, mortality, sexuality, drug use, and what we consider valuable in life." In the chapters that follow, experienced clinicians shatter myths about the inapplicability of psychoanalysis to work with AIDS patients. In addition to setting forth general principles involved in working with patients with serious illness, Hope and Mortality explores the wide range of therapeutic issues that have arisen in the wake of AIDS. Among the topics of individual chapters: working with children whose parents have AIDS; working with AIDS patients in an inner-city hospital; disability, dementia, and other realities of late-stage AIDS; treating someone who becomes HIV-positive while in therapy; leading a support group for gay men with AIDS; confronting fears of HIV in the "worried well"; and coming out of the closet as a heterosexual while running a bereavement group for gay men. Most poignant of all are chapters in which therapists examine how they have been transformed by treating people with AIDS. Here contributors candidly discuss how their attitudes toward death have shaped, and in turn been shaped by, their clinical work. They tell of recovering near-death memories, of questioning their reliance on traditional medicine, and of feeling the numbing effects of multiple loss with their patients. The AIDS epidemic has become so widespread that every clinician must learn about the disease and the psychological issues it raises. Hope and Mortality provides an illuminating exploration of these issues and raises profound questions about the overall aims of psychotherapy. It will instruct and challenge all mental health professionals, and provide hope and enlightenment to anyone dealing with a life-threatening condition.

The Dream Frontier is that rare book that makes available the cumulative wisdom of a century's worth of clinical examination of dreams and then reconfigured that wisdom on the basis of research in cognitive neuroscience. Drawing on psychodynamic theorists and neuroscientific researchers with equal fluency and grace, Mark Blechner introduces the reader to a conversation of the finest minds, from Freud to Jung, from Sullivan to Erikson, from Aserinksy and Kleitman to Hobson, as the work toward an understanding of dreams and dreaming that is both scientifically credible and personally meaningful. The dream, in Blechner's elegantly conceived overview, offers itself to the dreamer as an answer to a question yet to be asked. Approached in thi open-ended manner, dreams come to reveal the meaning-making systems of the unconscious in the total absence of waking considerations of reality testing and communicability. Systems of dream interpretation arise as helpful, if inherently limited, strategies for apprehending this unconscious quest for meaning. Whereas students will appreciate Blechner's concise reviews of the various schools of dream interpretation, teachers and supervisors will value his astute reexamination of the very process of interpretating dreams, which includes the manner in which group discussion of dreams may be employed to correct for individual interpretive biases. Elegantly written, lucidly argued, deftly synooptic but never ponderous in tone, The Dream Frontier provides a fresh outlook on the century just passed along with the keys to the antechambers of the new century's reinvestigation of fundamental questions of conscious and unconscious mental life. It transcends the typical limits of interdisciplinary reportage and brings both researcher and clinician to the threshold of a new, mutually enriching exploration of the dream frontier in search of basic answers to basic questions.

The last half-century has seen enormous changes in society s attitude toward sexuality. In the 1950s, homosexuals in the United States were routinely arrested; today, homosexual activity between consenting adults is legal in every state, with same-sex marriage legal in Massachusetts and Connecticut. In the 1950s, ambitious women were often seen as psychopathological and were told by psychoanalysts that they had penis envy that needed treatment; today, a woman has campaigned for President of the United States.

Mark Blechner has lived and worked through these startling changes in society, and Sex Changes collects papers he has written over the last 45 years on sex, gender, and sexuality. Interspersed with these papers are reflections on the changes that have occurred during that time period, both within the scope of society at large as well as in his personal experiences inside and outside of the therapeutic setting. He shows how changes in society, changes in his life, and changes in his writing on sexuality - as well as changes within psychoanalysis itself - have affected one another.

One hundred years ago, psychoanalysis was at the cutting edge of new ideas about sex and gender, but in the latter half of the 20th Century, psychoanalysts were often seen as reactionary upholders of society s prejudices. Sex Changes seeks to restore the place of psychoanalysis as the "once and future queer science," and aims for a radical shift in psychoanalytic thinking about sexuality, gender, normalcy, prejudice, and the relationship of therapeutic aims and values.

AIDS has humbled us. Thus observes editor Mark Blechner in introducing readers to this powerful collection of essays on psychodynamic approaches to AIDS. It is the disease, Blechner tells us, that "has forced us to rethink our relation to sickness and health, mortality, sexuality, drug use, and what we consider valuable in life." In the chapters that follow, experienced clinicians shatter myths about the inapplicability of psychoanalysis to work with AIDS patients.
In addition to setting forth general principles involved in working with patients with serious illness, " Hope and Mortality" explores the wide range of therapeutic issues that have arisen in the wake of AIDS. Among the topics of individual chapters: working with children whose parents have AIDS; working with AIDS patients in an inner-city hospital; disability, dementia, and other realities of late-stage AIDS; treating someone who becomes HIV-positive while in therapy; leading a support group for gay men with AIDS; confronting fears of HIV in the "worried well"; and coming out of the closet as a heterosexual while running a bereavement group for gay men.
Most poignant of all are chapters in which therapists examine how they have been transformed by treating people with AIDS. Here contributors candidly discuss how their attitudes toward death have shaped, and in turn been shaped by, their clinical work. They tell of recovering near-death memories, of questioning their reliance on traditional medicine, and of feeling the numbing effects of multiple loss with their patients.
The AIDS epidemic has become so widespread that every clinician must learn about the disease and the psychological issues it raises. "Hope and Mortality "provides an illuminating exploration of these issues and raises profound questions about the overall aims of psychotherapy. It will instruct and challenge all mental health professionals, and provide hope and enlightenment to anyone dealing with a life-threatening condition.

The Dream Frontier is that rare book that makes available the cumulative wisdom of a century's worth of clinical examination of dreams and then reconfigured that wisdom on the basis of research in cognitive neuroscience. Drawing on psychodynamic theorists and neuroscientific researchers with equal fluency and grace, Mark Blechner introduces the reader to a conversation of the finest minds, from Freud to Jung, from Sullivan to Erikson, from Aserinksy and Kleitman to Hobson, as the work toward an understanding of dreams and dreaming that is both scientifically credible and personally meaningful.
The dream, in Blechner's elegantly conceived overview, offers itself to the dreamer as an answer to a question yet to be asked. Approached in thi open-ended manner, dreams come to reveal the meaning-making systems of the unconscious in the total absence of waking considerations of reality testing and communicability. Systems of dream interpretation arise as helpful, if inherently limited, strategies for apprehending this unconscious quest for meaning. Whereas students will appreciate Blechner's concise reviews of the various schools of dream interpretation, teachers and supervisors will value his astute reexamination of the very process of interpretating dreams, which includes the manner in which group discussion of dreams may be employed to correct for individual interpretive biases.
Elegantly written, lucidly argued, deftly synooptic but never ponderous in tone, The Dream Frontier provides a fresh outlook on the century just passed along with the keys to the antechambers of the new century's reinvestigation of fundamental questions of conscious and unconscious mental life. It transcendsthe typical limits of interdisciplinary reportage and brings both researcher and clinician to the threshold of a new, mutually enriching exploration of the dream frontier in search of basic answers to basic questions.&n