Essentially clinical in its approach, Psychic Retreats discusses the problem of patients who are 'stuck' and with whom it is difficult to make meaningful contact. John Steiner, an experienced psychoanalyst, uses new developments in Kleinian theory to explain how this happens.He examines the way object relationships and defences can be organized into complex structures which lead to a personality and an analysis becoming rigid and stuck, with little opportunity for developm...

This book explores the conflict between holding on to and letting go of loss,paying homage to Freud’s classic ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ and buildingon its foundation with contemporary ideas.Losses are met throughout life and are either accepted and mournedor resented and denied. Sometimes mourning is inappropriate or prematurebecause losses can be prevented, and unfinished business needs to becompleted. Eventually, however, accepting and mourning ...

For thousands of years prior to Henry Hudson’s voyage, the Hudson River was a vital commercial and strategic route for the indigenous peoples who settled near its banks. The river’s importance continued for centuries afterward, linking the great trading center of Manhattan with remote places upstate and beyond. In Revolutionary times, the successful struggle for the Hudson was key to American victory over the power of the British military.The Hudson River railroad succeeded earlier...

Illusion, Disillusion, and Irony in Psychoanalysis explores and develops the role of illusion and daydream in everyday life, and in psychoanalysis. Using both clinical examples and literary works, idealised illusions and the inevitable disillusion that is met when reality makes an impact, are carefully explored.Idealised phantasies which involve a timeless universe inevitably lead to disillusion in the face of reality which introduces an awareness of time, ageing, and even...

Lectures on Technique by Melanie Klein is based on a series of six lectures given by Melanie Klein to students at the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1936 and repeated several times in subsequent years. They were discovered in the Melanie Klein Archives housed in the Wellcome Medical Library and have been previously described by Elizabeth Spillius but never before published. In this book, John Steiner explores what characterises Kleinian Technique, how her technique changed ov...

Seeing and Being Seen: Emerging from a Psychic Retreat examines the themes that surface when considering clinical situations where patients feel stuck and where a failure to develop impedes the progress of analysis.This book analyses the anxieties and challenges confronted by patients as they begin to emerge from the protection of psychic retreats. Divided into three parts, areas of discussion include:embarrassment, shame, and humiliationh...

How has Herbert Rosenfeld contributed to psychoanalysis today?Rosenfeld in Retrospect presents original psychoanalytic papers showing the influence of Herbert Rosenfeld on psychoanalysis today, and reproduces some of Rosenfeld's most important clinical writings.In the first part of this book, The Conference Papers: Contemporary Developments of Rosenfeld's Work, the editor brings together papers and discussions by Rosenfeld's well-known contemporaries, Rona...

When the dead rise they stop being nice. They're not your friend. They're not your relative, acquaintance, lover, neighbor, or that person who says hi to you at work. The dead have one desire; the blood of the living. They come in the night, and they don't stop. Only the sun holds them back if you can make it to dawn.A chemical engineer, Hayden Cornell was contracted to study two incapacitated vampires. But a global outbreak forces Hayden on the run, where he joins up with Evelyn G...

A collection of papers focusing on the Kleinian conception of the Oedipus complex, how this is now understood, and what effect it has had on clinical practice. The papers by the authors which form the greater part of The Oedipus Complex Today were originally given at the Melanie Klein Conference on the Oedipus Complex in September 1987 at University College, London. The conference, jointly organized by Professor J. Sandler of the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College and Mrs. ...

What is creativity, and where does it come from? Creativity and Development explores the fascinating connections and tensions between creativity research and developmental psychology, two fields that have largely progressed independently of each other-until now. In this book, scholars influential in both fields explore the emergence of new ideas, and the development of the people and situations that bring them to fruition. The uniquely collaborative nature of Oxford's Counterpoint...

Rodin's sculpture "The Thinker" dominates our collective imagination as the purest representation of human inquiry--the lone, stoic thinker. But while the Western belief in individualism romanticizes this perception of the solitary creative process, the reality is that scientific and artistic forms emerge from the joint thinking, passionate conversations, emotional connections and shared struggles common in meaningful relationships. In Creative Collaboration, Vera John-Steiner offers rare ...

An exploration of the hidden human, emotional, and social dimensions of mathematicsMathematics is often thought of as the coldest expression of pure reason. But few subjects provoke hotter emotions—and inspire more love and hatred—than mathematics. And although math is frequently idealized as floating above the messiness of human life, its story is nothing if not human; often, it is all too human. Loving and Hating Mathematics is about the hidden human, em...