Psychoanalytic Approaches to Loss


Book Description

Psychoanalytic Approaches to Loss: Mourning, Melancholia and Couples applies psychoanalytic ideas to the clinically complex issue of loss in couples and families and outlines a new model for the treatment of associated unresolved grief. In line with contemporary approaches to couple and family psychoanalysis, this integrated object relations and link theory model provides a clear framework and approach for assessing and treating this clinical presentation. The book brings together contributions from internationally known and respected clinicians and authors who focus on loss, including repeated pregnancy loss, the loss of a child or parent and the loss of a relationship itself. These psychoanalytic couple therapists take the reader inside their consulting rooms, enabling observation of their approaches to the treatment of couples experiencing loss and associated unresolved grief. Psychoanalytic Approaches to Loss: Mourning, Melancholia and Couples will make an important contribution to the literature on grief and mourning and the application of psychoanalytic thinking to couples presenting with difficulties linked to unresolved grief, following loss. It represents an essential resource to psychotherapists, counsellors, family therapists, mental health professionals and many others supporting those experiencing loss.




The New Black


Book Description

The New Black is Darian Leader's compassionate and illuminating exploration of melancholy What happens when we lose someone we love? A death, a separation or the break-up of a relationship are some of the hardest times we have to live through. We may fall into a nightmare of depression, lose the will to live and see no hope for the future. What matters at this crucial point is whether or not we are able to mourn. In this important and groundbreaking book, acclaimed psychoanalyst and writer Darian Leader urges us to look beyond the catch-all concept of depression to explore the deeper, unconscious ways in which we respond to the experience of loss. In so doing, we can loosen the grip it may have upon our lives. 'His orthodox, psychoanalytical approach, produces an unpredictable, occasionally brilliant book. The New Black is a mixture of Freudian text, clinical assessments and Leader's own brand of gentle wisdom'Herald 'Compelling and important . . . an engrossing and wise book'Hanif Kureishi 'There are many self-help books on the market . . . The New Black is a book that might actually help'Independent Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst practising in London and a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research and of the College of Psychoanalysts - UK. He is the author of The New Black, Strictly Bipolar, Why do women write more letters than they post?, Promises lovers make when it gets late, Freud's Footnotes and Stealing the Mona Lisa, and co-author, with David Corfield, of Why Do People Get Ill? He is Honorary Visiting Professor in the School of Human and Life Sciences, Roehampton University.




The Problem of Loss and Mourning


Book Description

Sixteen invited papers discuss the subject in terms of psychoanalytic theory, clinical practice, research, and daily life. The five sections cover psychoanalytic theory and application; developmental perspectives; clinical contributions; research perspectives: empirical studies on the loss of parents in early life, and the significance of such studies; and the Holocaust: the limits of mourning. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Environmental Melancholia


Book Description

In this groundbreaking book, Renee Lertzman applies psychoanalytic theory and psychosocial research to the issue of public engagement and public apathy in response to chronic ecological threats. By highlighting unconscious and affective dimensions of contemporary ecological issues, Lertzman deconstructs the idea that there is a gap between what people care about and what is actually carried out in policy and personal practice. In doing so, she presents an innovative way to think about and design engagement practices and policy interventions. Based on key qualitative fieldwork and in-depth interviews conducted in Green Bay, Wisconsin, each chapter provides a psychosocial, psychoanalytic perspective on subjectivity, affect and identity, and considers what this means for understanding behaviour in relation to environmental crises and climate change. The book argues for a theory of environmental melancholia that accounts for the ways in which people experience profound loss and disruption caused by environmental issues, and yet may have trouble expressing or making sense of such experiences. Environmental Melancholia offers a fresh perspective to the field of environmental psychology that until now has been largely dominated by research in cognitive, behavioural and social psychology. It will appeal to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of psychoanalysis, psychosocial studies and sustainability, as well as policy makers and educators internationally.




The Melancholy of Race


Book Description

Cheng proposes that racial identification is itself already a melancholic act--a social category that is imaginatively supported through a dynamic of loss and compensation, by which the racial other is at once rejected and retained. Using psychoanalytic theories on mourning and melancholia as inroads into her subject, Cheng offers a closely observed and carefully reasoned account of the minority experience as expressed in works of art by, and about, Asian-Americans and African-Americans. She argues that the racial minority and dominant American culture both suffer from racial melancholia and that this insight is crucial to a productive reimagining of progressive politics.




New Models of Bereavement Theory and Treatment


Book Description

Honoring the centennial of Sigmund Freud’s seminal paper Mourning and Melancholia, New Models of Bereavement Theory and Treatment: New Mourning is a major contribution to our culture’s changing view of bereavement and mourning, identifying flaws in old models and offering a new, valid and effective approach. George Hagman and his fellow contributors bring together key psychoanalytic texts from the past 20 years, exploring contemporary research, clinical practice and model building relating to the problems of bereavement, mourning and grief. They propose changes to the asocial, intra-psychic nature of the standard analytic model of mourning, changes compatible with contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice. Arguing that the most important goal of mourning is often to preserve, rather than give up the relationship to the deceased, this book provides a more positive, hopeful model. Crucially, it emphasizes the importance of mourning together, rather than alone. New Models of Bereavement Theory and Treatment: New Mourning will be the go-to resource for researchers, clinicians and interested lay people seeking a clear, accessible overview of contemporary mourning theory, useful in their daily lives and in clinical practice. It will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, grief counsellors, as well teachers, undergraduates and advanced students studying in the field.




Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis


Book Description

A Bestseller Attachment Theory shows scientifically how our earliest relationships with our mothers influence our later relationships in life. This book offers an excellent introduction to the findings of attachment theory and the major schools of psychoanalytic thought. "The book every student, colleague, and even rival theoretician has been waiting for. With characteristic wit, philosophical sophistication, scholarship, humanity, incisiveness, and creativity, Fonagy succinctly describes the links, differences, and future directions of his twin themes. [His book] is destined to take its place as one of a select list of essential psychology books of the decade." -Jeremy Holmes, Senior Lecturer in Psychotherapy, University of Exeter "Extraordinary--an invaluable resource for developmental psychoanalysis." -Joy D. Osofsky, Professor, Louisiana State University




Love and Loss in Life and in Treatment


Book Description

Have you ever wondered what a therapist really thinks? Have you ever wondered if a therapist truly cares about her patients? Have you tried to imagine the unimaginable, the loss of the person most dear to you? Is it true that `tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all? ` Love and loss are a ubiquitous part of life, bringing the greatest joys and the greatest heartaches. In one way or another all relationships end. People leave, move on, die. Loss is an ever-present part of life. In Love and Loss, Linda B. Sherby illustrates that in order to grow and thrive, we must learn to mourn, to move beyond the person we have lost while taking that person with us in our minds. Love, unlike loss, is not inevitable but, she argues, no satisfying life can be lived without deeply meaningful relationships. The focus of Love and Loss is how patients' and therapists' independent experiences of love and loss, as well as the love and loss that they experience in the treatment room, intermingle and interact. There are always two people in the consulting room, both of whom are involved in their own respective lives, as well as the mutually responsive relationship that exists between them. Love and loss in the life of one of the parties affects the other, whether that affect takes place on a conscious or unconscious level. Love and Loss is unique in two respects.The first is its focus on the analyst's current life situation and how that necessarily affects both the patient and the treatment. The second is Sherby's willingness to share the personal memoir of her own loss which she has interwoven with extensive clinical material to clearly illustrate the effect the analyst's current life circumstance has on the treatment. Writing as both a psychoanalyst and a widow, Linda B. Sherby makes it possible for the reader to gain an inside view of the emotional experience of being an analyst, making this book of interest to a wide audience. Professionals from psychoanalysts and psychotherapists and bereavement specialists through students in all the mental health fields to the public in general, will resonate and learn from this heartfelt and straightforward book.




The Therapist in Mourning


Book Description

The unexpected loss of a client can be a lonely and isolating experience for therapists. While family and friends can ritually mourn the deceased, the nature of the therapeutic relationship prohibits therapists from engaging in such activities. Practitioners can only share memories of a client in circumscribed ways, while respecting the patient's confidentiality. Therefore, they may find it difficult to discuss the things that made the therapeutic relationship meaningful. Similarly, when a therapist loses someone in their private lives, they are expected to isolate themselves from grief, since allowing one's personal life to enter the working relationship can interfere with a client's self-discovery and healing. For therapists caught between their grief and the empathy they provide for their clients, this collection explores the complexity of bereavement within the practice setting. It also examines the professional and personal ramifications of death and loss for the practicing clinician. Featuring original essays from longstanding practitioners, the collection demonstrates the universal experience of bereavement while outlining a theoretical framework for the position of the bereft therapist. Essays cover the unexpected death of clients and patient suicide, personal loss in a therapist's life, the grief of clients who lose a therapist, disastrous loss within a community, and the grief resulting from professional losses and disruptions. The first of its kind, this volume gives voice to long-suppressed thoughts and emotions, enabling psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, and other mental health specialists to achieve the connection and healing they bring to their own work.




Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation


Book Description

In Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation critic David L. Eng and psychotherapist Shinhee Han draw on case histories from the mid-1990s to the present to explore the social and psychic predicaments of Asian American young adults from Generation X to Generation Y. Combining critical race theory with several strands of psychoanalytic thought, they develop the concepts of racial melancholia and racial dissociation to investigate changing processes of loss associated with immigration, displacement, diaspora, and assimilation. These case studies of first- and second-generation Asian Americans deal with a range of difficulties, from depression, suicide, and the politics of coming out to broader issues of the model minority stereotype, transnational adoption, parachute children, colorblind discourses in the United States, and the rise of Asia under globalization. Throughout, Eng and Han link psychoanalysis to larger structural and historical phenomena, illuminating how the study of psychic processes of individuals can inform investigations of race, sexuality, and immigration while creating a more sustained conversation about the social lives of Asian Americans and Asians in the diaspora.