Psychoanalytic Studies on Dysphoria: The False Accord in the Divine Symphony depicts the profound dysphoria afflicting certain individuals and includes the authors own personal experience of this as a German Jewish child during the Holocaust. Marion M. Oliner explores the impact of catastrophic events on the lives of individuals and their descendants from a broadly psychoanalytic perspective. The book focuses on the interplay between the experience and the unconscious meaning attributed to the trauma, and the ways in which patients may feel guilt, and blame themselves for the events and effects of their trauma. Drawing on the work of Freud and Winnicott, and with emphasis on the traumas suffered during World War Two, Oliner offers new ways of understanding how resistant to treatment such traumas can be, and how the analyst can understand the experiences. The chapters span the evolution undergone in the nearly four decades of practice by the author. The book references a range of works including some taken from the German and French psychoanalytic literature, some never published in English. Taken together they aim at keeping the vitality of psychoanalysis without idealization whilst discarding concepts whose essence is static and therefore unhelpful. Psychoanalytic Studies on Dysphoria: The False Accord in the Divine Symphony will appeal to psychoanalysts as well as other mental health professionals working with self-defeating behavior as a result of trauma. Table of Contents Series Editor Preface by Gabriela Legorreta Author’s Preface; Introduction; Chapter One: Hysterical Features Among Children of Survivors Chapter Two: The Nazi Hunter Chapter Three: On the Difficulty of Hating one’s Enemies Chapter Four: Wars are caused by Fear: the rest is History Chapter Five: Life is not a dream: the importance of the real Chapter Six: Further explorations of Winnicott’s "Use of the Object" Chapter Seven: The meaning of the frame in Psychoanalytic Treatment About the Author Marion M. Oliner is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City, USA. She is a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association, the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis and the Metropolitan Institute for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. |