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Fragments from an Extraordinary Life: Thriving on Adversity

Author: Estela V. Welldon

Price range: £17.09 through £26.99

Profesora Estela Welldon has lived a life anything but ordinary. A life filled from her earliest years with adventure, passion, hard work, despair, success, failure, love, and loss. Her story is astounding, exhilarating, and profoundly moving. A woman fiercely true to herself, walking her own unique path, no matter the obstacles in her way.

Due to be published in November 2026

Author

Estela V. Welldon
ISBN

9781800133792
Format

Paperback, e-Book, Print & e-Book
Page Extent

216
Publication Date

November 2026
Subject Areas

Biography & Memoir; Psychoanalysis
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Description

Estela V. Welldon is an extraordinary woman who has lived an extraordinary life. Born in Argentina to brilliant, passionate, unconventional parents, she lived a charmed childhood until the sudden death of her brother. Her father, maddened by grief, turned against her. Her mother withdrew into a decline from which she never fully recovered. Estela rebelled in unique style: by embracing religion and studying hard. Medical school gave her the escape route she craved. She travelled first to the US and then to the UK, her forever home. Her travels uncovered new ways of life, new adversities, and new communities. Estela met each new experience with her characteristic exuberance: she battled social injustice, embraced London’s swinging sixties, and pursued her career ambitions.

Fragments from an Extraordinary Life: Thriving on Adversity is the first of two volumes that detail the inspirational life of a woman of immense charisma. This first volume covers Estela’s early life, beginning with her parents’ back stories and continuing through her education and early career to a more established professional standing and marriage, motherhood, and, tragically, widowhood. The subsequent volume marks the start of her new life as a young working widow with a baby in tow. Here, once again, she faces adversity head-on.

Featuring over 100 photographs from a life well-lived, those interested in life stories will be captivated by Estela V. Welldon’s insatiable zest for living.

About the author

About the author

Estela V. Welldon is a psychiatrist, group analyst, and psychoanalytic psychotherapist, as well as a founding figure in forensic psychotherapy. Born in Argentina, she built her career in London, where she worked for many years as a consultant psychiatrist at the Portman Clinic, treating patients whose destructive and, at times, criminal behaviour grew out of their early histories and consequent inner lives. She is the author of the landmark Mother, Madonna, Whore: The Idealization and Denigration of Motherhood (1988), which challenged the long-held assumption that perversion and violence were exclusively male. She was the founder of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy, now in its thirty-fifth year. Her work has influenced clinicians, researchers, and readers well beyond the consulting room and all over the world. In this book, she turns her attention to her own story, offering a candid and deeply personal account of a rich and extraordinary life.

Contents

Contents

Table of Contents

Foreword by Professor Brett Kahr

Foreword by EVW

1. Background
2. My early years
3. Earth-shattering
4. Education
5. Menninger School of Psychiatry, Topeka, Kansas
6. Arrival in London
7. The female sea doctor’s adventures
8. Return to Argentina

An operatic interlude
Understanding murder vs judging it—by going to the opera

9. Real leather or PVC?
10. Falling in love
11. A birth and a death

Memorial talk for Dr Ronald Welldon by Frederic Samson

Epilogue by Dan Welldon

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