Good Feelings: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Positive Emotions and Attitudes (The International Psychoanalytical Association Psychoanalytic Ideas and Applications Series) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 185575780X ISBN 13: 9781855757806

Publisher: Routledge, 2009

Synopsis

This tightly edited volume opens a new vista in psychoanalysis by focusing upon positive and life-enhancing emotions and attitudes. The realms it covers include love, friendship, enthusiasm, courage, tact, resilience, and forgiveness, among others. Seminal papers on these topics have existed but remain scattered throughout the psychoanalytic literature. This book brings them together in a harmonious gestalt. It is more than an anthology, however. Each paper is followed by a freshly written commentary that critically evaluates the paper and brings it in consonance with up-to-date, contemporary psychoanalytic knowledge. Issues of development, adaptation, psychopathology, and analytic technique, as these pertain to the positive dimension of affective experience, are elucidated. The book also deals with the broader and overarching issue of the 'goodness' that accompanies, causes, and is enhanced by the positive emotions in consideration here. Thus the ever-elusive and puzzling issue of psychoanalytic morality finds a place in the discourse, with all its rich and complex theoretical and technical implications.

About this title

Review:

This extraordinary book is devoted to a psychoanalytic exploration of good feelings, that is, positive enotions and attitudes such as love, friendship, courage, enthusiasm, resilience, faith and many more. It is unusual not only in its subject matter, so rarely touched upon in our literature, but also in the breadth of its contributions from close to a dozen countries throughout the analytic world. It provides fascinating reading for those of us who, after those days when we are immersed in the anger, grief and pain of our practice, need to be reminded once again of the goodness that is also part of the human condition. --Dr. Sheldon Bach, Faculty: IPTAR and NY Freudian Society and author of 'Getting from Here to There'

About the Author:

Salman Akhtar, MD, was born in India and completed his medical and psychiatric education there. Upon arriving in the USA in 1973, he repeated his psychiatric training at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, and then obtained psychoanalytic training from the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute. Currently, he is Professor of Psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College and a training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. His more than 300 publications include nine books: Broken Structures; Quest for Answers; Inner Torment; Immigration and Identity; New Clinical Realms; Objects of Our Desire; Regarding Others; Turning Points in Dynamic Psychotherapy; and The Damaged Core, as well as twenty-six edited or co-edited volumes in psychiatry and psychoanalysis and six collections of poetry. He is also a Scholar-in-Residence at the Inter-Act Theatre Company in Philadelphia.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 185575780X
• ISBN 13: 9781855757806
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 516
• Editor: Akhtar Salman