Mourning, Spirituality and Psychic Change: A New Object Relations View of Psychoanalysis

by Kavaler-Adler,Susan

• ISBN13: 9781583912935
• ISBN10: 1583912932
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-09-25
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In her earlier books, Susan Kavaler-Adler identified healthy mourning for traumas and life changes as an essential aspect of successful analysis, and drew the distinction between a healthy acceptance of mourning as part of development and pathological mourning, which 'fixes' a patient at an unhealthy stage of development. This new book brings such distinctions into the consulting room, exploring how a successful analyst can help patients to utilise mourning for past troubles to move them forward to a lasting change for the better, emotionally, psychically and erotically. The author also tackles the controversial issue of spirituality in psychoanalysis, and explores how psychoanalysis can help patients come to terms with difficult issues in a time of great psychic and spiritual disturbance. These themes are brought to life via 2 richly detailed case studies.

Table of Contents

A New Metapsychology for Clinical Phenomenology and Psychic Health, A Phenomenological Theory of Developmental Mourning

Mourning as Explicit and Implicit in Psychoanalytic Theory

Mourning as Implicit and Explicit in Psychoanalytic Theory

The Case of June: Finding a New Identity through the Mourning of Traumatic Loss and Guilt, Primal Rage, and Poignant Regret

The Case of June

A Mournful and Spiritual Journey: Spiritual and Sexual Evolution

June's Evolution in Later Years of Treatment: Transformation through Mourning in Developmental, Transference, and Life Change Terms

Seven Generations of Grief: The Case of Phillip

The Case of Phillip

The Spiritual Evolution

The Case of Laura: Mourning as the Poetry of Female Eroticism: Homoerotic Evolutions of a Lesbian Woman within Developmental Mourning

The Case of Laura

Strands and Cycles of Mourning and Unrequited Love: Modes of Mourning

Mourning and Creativity: A Journey through a Male Artist's Development

The Divine, the Deviant and the Diabolical: A Journey through a Female

Artist's Paintings During Her Participation in a Creative Process Group

An Evolution of Developmental Mourning (previously published in the International Forum of Psychoanalysis)

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