Stalking is a predatory form of terrorizing people. Whether the tormenting erotomanic pursuit by the unrequited lover of his or her prey, or the secretive invasive surveillance in government-backed counterterrorism, stalker and stalkee are ”coupled” in today’s world of idealized yet dissociated intrapsychic, interpersonal, national and international relations. “Cyberspace,” an unprecedented force for good, has become, along with more conventional venues, a fearsomely invasive stalking ground in private and public lives. Psychoanalytic cases, psychoanalytically informed analyses of film portrayals, and accounts of erotomanic, celebrity, and internationally conspiratorial stalking illustrate the underpinnings and expand the meager psychoanalytic literature on this topic. Film studies and psychoanalysis converge in a close look at voyeurism in stalking and in the acts of filming and film viewing. Gender differences among stalkers round out this picture. Parallel processes in the minds, actions, and lives of stalker and stalkee are inevitable in the blurred boundaries yet ineluctable connection between victim and victimizer, whether due to merger fantasies, projective identifications or a host of other psychological links. This book extends and develops these ideas to similar relations between terrorism from within and terrorism from without in both sexual and surveillance stalking. About the Author: Helen K. Gediman PhD, ABPP, FIPA is Adjunct Clinical Professor of Psychology at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, where she is also a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst. She is a member and Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the Contemporary Freudian Society in both its New York City and Washington D.C. Programs. She is also a member of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR); the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA); the Confederation of Independent Societies of the IPA (CIPS), and the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), where she serves as a councillor on its Board of Directors as a delegate of Contemporary Freudians in APsaA (CFIA). Dr Gediman has published extensively in psychoanalytic journals and is the author of Fantasies of Love and Death in Life and Art, and co-author of Ego Functions in Schizophrenics, Neurotics and Normals (with Leopold Bellak and Marvin S. Hurvich) and The Many Faces of Deceit (with Janice S. Lieberman). She is in full time private practice in New York City. |
