Items related to By Force of Fantasy: How We Make Our Lives
Challenging Freudian opinions that state that happy, well-balanced people do not fantasize, a revealing look at the benefits of positive fantasy lives explains why they are crucial to emotional health. Tour.
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From the Back Cover:
About the Author:
Most people do not take their daydreams seriously; they are often embarrassed or ashamed by them and rarely reveal them to other people. In this ground-breaking book, Ethel Person argues that fantasy is central to our lives and essential to our well-being. Far from being a retreat from the world, fantasy plays a major role in shaping it.
Drawing on her vast clinical experience and research, as well as on examples from literature and art, she offers provocative evidence that fantasies fuel our behaviour, revealing our secret hopes and fears and helping us transform our lives. Fantasies can soothe us or turn us on sexually, but, more significantly, they let us test possibilities. They deepen our relationships with other people. They protect us from precipitate actions (as when we imagine murdering a tyrannical boss or an indifferent spouse). They serve as viable life plans. They heal or undo past defects and old conflicts. They create an ambience of hope for the future, even in seemingly hopeless situations, and give us the strength to endure.
'The Force of Fantasy' probes the mysteries behind the inner world of imagination: why each of us plays out specific themes from childhood to old age, why we guard our fantasies even from ourselves, why sexual fantasies enjoy such a privileged position in mental life, and much more.
Focussing on a long-neglected topic, this engrossing book sheds light on a vital area of our lives.
Ethel S. Person is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Columbia University Research Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, and Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons. She is also the author of 'Dreams of Love and Fateful Encounters: The Power of Romantic Passion' and the co-editor of 'Women: Sex and Sexuality; Passionate Attachments: Thinking About Love; 'and 'Psychoanalysis: The Second Century.'
'Freud thought that fantasy was a childish escape from, and denial of, reality. It is a pleasure to welcome a book from a psychoanalyst which recognizes the many positive functions served by fantasy in the lives of all of us.'
DR ANTHONY STORR
Ethel S. Person is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Columbia University Research Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, and Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons. She is the author of’Dreams of Love’ and ‘Fateful Encounters’, among other titles. She lives in New York City, US.
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- PublisherBasic Books
- Publication date1996
- ISBN 10 0465023606
- ISBN 13 9780465023608
- BindingPaperback
- Rating
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