Books

Andrew Samuels has established an international practice as a political consultant, working with senior politicians, political parties and activist groups. His lectures and workshops on the application of 'therapy thinking' to social and political issues attract wide interest. His previous books in this area, such as The Political Psyche and Politics on the Couch, have been widely appreciated. Now, in a long-anticipated tour-de-force that is both compassionate and intellectually stimulating, this book deepens in a new and innovate style his engagement with themes such as economics, ecopsychology, leadership, aggression and violence, the role of the individual in progressive politics, and sexuality and spirituality in political contexts. The reader is encouraged to move beyond conventional professional or academic discourse by the inclusion of experiential exercises in the text. In this way, activism and analysis, public and private, therapeutic and more-than-personal are all brought together in a satisfying yet challenging synthesis.

Heartbreak is a triple loss At first, the physical absence of the partner seems like the only cause of our suffering and one is under the illusion that if he or she would only come back, all would be fine again. It is truly an illusion because there are three absentees in the drama of heartbreak. The first is the beloved, and even if that person were to come back, the second, the person you were with the beloved, and the third, the person you were for the beloved, are never coming back. This triple loss explains the loss of a sense of identity. Individuals suffering heartbreak have nightmares of losing their nametag, passport, car keys, of being lost in a strange city, of walking in a cemetery and reading their name on a funeral monument, of having no voice, no head, no body, of coming to work and somebody else's name is on the door of their office, or coming home and their mother asks them to introduce themselves... all are metaphors of an estrangement from the self. The only solution is to become somebody else. Philosophers have argued that our identity is a psychosocial construct, a compromise between what our parents want, what society wants, and what we think we want. Since identity is a construct, it follows that is can be deconstructed. The myth of the divine rights of kings is a perfect example of a deconstructionist attack on a value that was no longer sustainable. Heartbreak is a similar demolition derby of an obsolete identity. The lover, a mirror who used to reflect a positive image of yourself, now reflects nothing, or if it does, it is a tarnished, ugly picture that communicates, "sorry, but you are no longer adequate." The identity built to attract and relate to the partner is a dead cable connector. Heartbreak is such a rough deconstruction that it is felt at first like a death of the self. There is a word for that feeling: alienation, which means a separation from oneself. This book helps you answer the following question: "if I cannot be who I was, who can I become?" Invent, discover, imagine, try, and become that new person. Table of Content CHAPTER 1 BYPASS YOUR SYNAPTIC BUNDLE OF FEAR The three actors in your drama Your crocodile psychology: grab, grip, hit There you are my crocodile! Your puppy psychology: beg, whine, wait. Your regression to a preverbal vulnerability Attachment theories There you are my puppy! The wolf separated from the pack the broken heart syndrome The art of consoling Neuromania and Darwinitis Is it in my genes, my brain or my soul? Becoming a wise human The inner and the outer CHAPTER 2 NEUROSCIENCE AND THE UNCONSCIOUS My life in a copter The end of the behaviorist dominance You can't repair the past The slave complex No ego, no Self, no identity. CHAPTER 3 WHAT YOU MOTHER NEVER TOLD YOU I am a champion procrastinator I am dependent but won't admit it I feel inadequate but cover it with uppityness Unload some projections CHAPTER 4 AH! JEALOUSY Rivalry can be a factor of evolution You don't own the partner Beware of psychic inflation There is a way around jealousy Is it envy or jealousy? CHAPTER 5 RELATIONSHIP ADDICTION The realm of the invisible Heartbreak is a triple loss CHAPTER 6 NARCISSISM: A TREND AND A CURSE The rage of a baby Learn to smell a narcissist The narcissist as a self-loathing individual The narcissist as a self-adoring individual The trophy partner: narcissism by another name Monica, the figid beauty queen The cashmere label

This volume ensues from the 8th Jungian Odyssey retreat, inspired by Kartause Ittingen, a former monastery founded in 1150, and lying some thirty miles from C.G. Jung's birthplace, Kesswil. As training analysts and scholarly guests of the International School of Analytical Psychology, the authors address students, clinicians, and all others with interest in Jung. Nestled in the Thurgau lowlands, Kartause Ittingen still echoes its past as the tranquil refuge of a community of Carthusian monks. Invoking the genius loci, Lionel Corbett wryly recalls Lao Tzu's wisdom, "Those who know don't talk; those who talk, don't know." Corbett thus humbly submits, "Silence is not just an absence of sound," but a "non-conceptual mode of knowing," with "amazing qualities and textures." In this volume, the authors listen for the textures of silence emanating from sources as varied as the analytic consulting room, dream, fairy tale, the music of John Cage, and the activities of wandering and rowing. Can we attune our hearts to the silence that traps the oppressed and exploited? When is silence healing? When does it divide and crush us? When is the time to speak out about what truly matters? Indeed one author begs, "make more noise!" Thus readers of this volume are invited to ." . . watch patiently the silent happenings of the soul," realizing that, "the most and best happens when it is not regulated from outside and above." (C.G. Jung)

The Heart is the meeting place of the individual and the divine--the inner ground of morality, authenticity, and integrity. The process of coming to the Heart and realizing the person we were meant to be is what Carl Jung called "Individuation." This path is full of moral challenges for anyone with the courage to take it up.

Using Jung's premise--that the main causes of psychological problems are conflicts of conscience--the author takes the reader through the philosophical and spiritual aspects of the ethical dimensions of this individual journey toward wholeness.

This book is a unique contribution to the link between individuation and ethics.

Joseph Campbell brought mythology to a mass audience. His bestselling books, including The Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces, are the rare blockbusters that are also scholarly classics.

While Campbell's work reached wide and deep as he covered the world's great mythological traditions, he never wrote a book on goddesses in world mythology. He did, however, have much to say on the subject. Between 1972 and 1986 he gave over twenty lectures and workshops on goddesses, exploring the figures, functions, symbols, and themes of the feminine divine, following them through their transformations across cultures and epochs.

In this provocative volume, editor Safron Rossi--a goddess studies scholar, professor of mythology, and curator of collections at Opus Archives, which holds the Joseph Campbell archival manuscript collection and personal library--collects these lectures for the first time. In them, Campbell traces the evolution of the feminine divine from one Great Goddess to many, from Neolithic Old Europe to the Renaissance. He sheds new light on classical motifs and reveals how the feminine divine symbolizes the archetypal energies of transformation, initiation, and inspiration.

How can we better understand the significance and implications of the ecological, economic, and cultural crises we now face? What are the deeper forces at work shaping the contemporary zeitgeist and connecting the major events of our time? Is it possible to place our moment in history in the context of great cyclical and diachronic patterns of change? Responses to these and other related questions are explored in this second issue of Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology. The nine essays featured here use archetypal astrology to shine a light on the deeper dynamics of history and contemporary culture. Contributions include cultural historian Richard Tarnas's analysis of the major world transits of the last five years, focusing especially on the Saturn-Uranus-Pluto T-square, and the second part of his exploration of the Saturn-Neptune complex. Also included are the second parts of Rod O'Neal's in-depth analysis of the Puritan movement and Keiron Le Grice's exploration of archetypal themes in the music of Bruce Springsteen. The other articles cover a wide variety of topics relevant to an archetypal understanding of contemporary culture such as the global financial crisis, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the gay rights movement, the history of rock and roll, and recent achievements in the sporting world.

Lauren Slater, a brilliant writer who is a young therapist, takes us on a mesmerizing personal and professional journey in this remarkable memoir about her work with mental and emotional illness. The territory of the mind and of madness can seem a foreign, even frightening place-until you read Welcome to My Country.

Writing in a powerful and original voice, Lauren Slater closes the distance between "us" and "them," transporting us into the country of Lenny, Moxi, Oscar, and Marie. She lets us watch as she interacts with and strives to understand patients suffering from mental and emotional distress-the schizophrenic, the depressed, the suicidal. As the young psychologist responds to, reflects on, and re-creates her interactions with the inner realities of the dispossessed, she moves us to a deeper understanding of the complexities of the human mind and spirit. And then, in a stunning final chapter, the psychologist confronts herself, when she is asked to treat a young woman, bulimic and suicidal, who is on the same ward where Slater herself was once such a patient.

Like An Unquiet Mind, Listening to Prozac and Girl, Interrupted, Welcome to My Country is a beautifully written, captivating, and revealing book, an unusual personal and professional memoir that brings us closer to understanding ourselves, one another, and the human condition.

Psychoanalysis has transformed our culture. We constantly use and refer to ideas from psychoanalysis, often unconsciously. Psychology, philosophy, politics, sociology, women's studies, anthropology, literary studies, cultural studies, and other disciplines have been permeated by the competing schools of psychoanalysis. But what of psychoanalysis itself? Where is it going one hundred years after Freud's own speculations took shape? Does it still have a role to play in cultural debate, or should it perhaps be abandoned?
Speculations After Freud confronts the dilemmas of contemporary psychoanalysis by bringing together some of the most influential and best known writers on psychoanalysis, philosophy and culture. The advocates and critics of psychoanalysis, both institutional and theoretical, critically appraise the powerful role psychoanalytic speculation plays in all areas of culture.

By examining the private correspondence of a circle of German psychoanalyst emigrés that included Otto Fenichel, Annie Reich, and Edith Jacobson, Russell Jacoby recaptures the radical zeal of classical analysis and the efforts of the Fenichel group to preserve psychoanalysis as a social and political theory, open to a broad range of intellectuals regardless of their medical background. In tracing this effort, he illuminates the repression by psychoanalysis of its own radical past and its transformation into a narrow medical technique. This book is of critical interest to the general reader as well as to psychoanalytic historians, theorists, and therapists.