ABSTRACT
Passion! The word brims with and exudes power, movement, intensity, vitality, desire, and fulfillment. Its multifaceted meanings include eroticism, rage, sex, suffering, drive, commitment, dedication, and love. On the one hand, it embodies a quality to be embraced and lived fully, to make life meaningful and worthwhile. On the other, it is sometimes to be treated with suspicion, reined in, subjected to the dictates of reason. While it brightens existence and its departure makes life dull, many passions may prove unbearable.
The manifold connotations of passion make it highly relevant to psychoanalysis, yet, so far, no book has explored the many facets of this pervasive theme. This book provides a comprehensive guide that will sensitize readers to the omnipresent importance of passionate emotion in the clinical setting, and throughout all areas and times of life. It bursts with thought-provoking ideas. Challenging cases are illuminated by penetrating reflections and novel applications and combinations of theoretical perspectives.
Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Passion explores the many ways in which very strong emotions – passions – can be understood and worked with in clinical contexts. The contributions cover such key topics as psychosis and violence, emotions in childhood, sexuality, secure and insecure attachments, the role of passion in seeking meaning, passion and transition space, and transference and countertransference.
This book will be of great help to all psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists struggling to assist patients (and perhaps themselves) in locating their passions, channeling and expressing them in meaningful ways, and overcoming obstacles to their fulfillment.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|27 pages
Dangerous liaisons
part II|51 pages
Sexuality and attachment security
chapter 5|8 pages
Seduced and abandoned
chapter 6|13 pages
Lessons in romance from middle-aged men who have had affairs
part III|21 pages
Seeking meaning, individuation, and fulfillment
chapter 8|6 pages
The marriage of intimacy and meaning
part IV|23 pages
Passions in childhood
part V|50 pages
Overcoming obstacles to passion
chapter 12|10 pages
Passion precluded
chapter 16|12 pages
Passion past in the present
part VI|34 pages
Using transitional space, dreams, and groups to release passion
chapter 18|8 pages
Passion (or past-shunned)
chapter 19|7 pages
Passionate links
part VII|26 pages
Passion for psychoanalysis