The book features contributions from a stellar international line up: Salman Akhtar, Maxine Anderson, Cobi Avshalom, Behdad Bozorgnia, Tom DeRose, Joseph Fernando, Alan Michael Karbelnig, Julie Jaffee Nagel, Gila Ofer, Mary Kay O’Neil, Nirav Soni, and Daniel Traub-Werner.
Anxiety is one of the most central concepts in both the theoretical and clinical foundations of psychoanalysis. Thus, the study of anxiety is, in effect, the study of psychoanalysis itself. Salman Akhtar and Mary Kay O’Neil have gathered together a thoughtful group of scholars to cover this challenging terrain. The book opens with two chapters that lay out the groundwork for things to come: the first offers succinct definitions of the plethora of psychiatric and psychoanalytic terms pertaining to this emotion; the second elucidates Freud’s changing views of anxiety. These chapters are followed by independent discourses on separation anxiety and castration anxiety that attempt to describe, critique, and update these well-established notions. A section on cultural matters follows which includes essays on performance and climate anxieties. Part IV focuses on the clinical process and provides three pithy discourses on the entanglement of anxiety with enactment, aging, and trauma. The fifth and final part explores the analyst’s clinical and professional anxieties.
The book’s approach arises from a multiplicity of perspectives. It aims to strengthen theory, clinical practice, and the technical skills of all psychoanalytically oriented therapists. It is essential reading for practicing clinicians, trainees, and students to help them gain a better understanding of the complexities of anxiety.
Mary Kay O’Neil, PhD, is a supervising and training psychoanalyst and registered psychologist in private practice in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Trained at the Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis, she received her PhD from the University of Toronto and was an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry. Currently, she is president of the North American Psychoanalytic Confederation (NAPsaC), a member of the board of the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society, and on the faculty of the Toronto Institute. Formerly, she served as director of the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis (Quebec English), Montreal, and was a North American representative on the board of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). In addition, she was a member of a number of IPA committees, including ethics and publications and also on the editorial board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. Author of The Unsung Psychoanalyst: The Quiet Influence of Ruth Easser, she co-edited seven other books and has contributed numerous journal articles as well as chapters and book reviews. Her research includes studies of depression, young adult development, sole-support mothers, the analyst as art collector, post-termination contact, and psychoanalytic ethics. Toronto and Montreal Foundations have funded her research activities.
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