Description

Can hope be pathological? What is love? How are envy and arrogance related to hatred? What is the optimal distance between the self and others? Why are some individuals excessively vulnerable to nostalgia? What are the distinctions between a need and a wish? Such questions frequently arise as one encounters individuals whose difficulties originate from an area between psychotic and neurotic organizations and yet who are not overtly borderline. How does one meet their ego needs without gratifying their regressive wishes? Do affirmative interventions work better than interpretive ones when the patient is in deep emotional turmoil? Integrating diverse psychoanalytic traditions with his own theoretical and clinical insights, Salman Akhtar provides answers to these and other important questions in this realm. He weaves the existing conceptual schisms and technical diversity into an integrated theory and technique. In a truly original contribution, he delineates certain ubiquitous human fantasies (e.g., “someday” and “if only” fantasies of optimism and nostalgia, and fantasies of powerful psychic tethers that bind us to others) and shows how their pathological variants underlie the suffering of these patients.

Author: Akhtar, Salman

Topic: Psychology
Media: Book
ISBN: 765701596
Language: English
Pages: 318