Books published by Ipbooks

Introduction to Understanding Psychopathology: A Psychoanalytic Perspective Is meant for students and professionals. It includes a review of basic concepts needed to understand psychopathology. Also, how psychopathology affects life events, basic biological functions, and natural strengths are examined. Diagnostic categories, childhood, adolescent and adult psychopathology are explored.. The language used is accessible and technical terms are well defined. Recommended readings are included at the end.

From the Introduction by Eugene Mahon:The collected papers of a psychoanalyst may not be autobiographical in the strictest sense but they do illuminate multiple facets of the analyst''s clinical experience, his reading experience and his experience with the flux of life itself over many decades; and therefore, in a relative sense, can be called autobiographical. Dr. Silverman has been writing articles for fifty years and as Book Editor of the Psychoanalytic Quarterly has been reading books and reviewing them for many decades. The articles in this collection have emerged out of an immersion in clinical encounters with children and adults, and his book essays have been the product of very close and serious encounters with the many books he has reviewed. When George Seferis was asked what were the influences that shaped him he said: "A lion is the product of all the lambs he has eaten, and I have been reading all my life." This gastronomic definition of influence is poetically comic but it illustrates the point I wish to make about Dr. Silverman: he has been devouring experience with analysands and books and life itself throughout his analytic career and that makes his collected papers the exciting and partially autobiographical story of his professional life over half a century. This is a great span of time and it is reflected in the vast scope and depth of these brilliant contributions to psychoanalysis. Any reader, who prior to reading the book cover to cover, ponders the array of chapter titles cannot but be impressed by the collection''s range and depth: e.g. Sudden Onset of anti-Chinese Prejudice in a Four-Year-Old Girl; Homosexuality in Two Women Treated from the Age of Nine Years; The Male Superego; The Voice of Conscience and the Sounds of the Analytic Hour; Countertransference and the Myth of the Perfectly Analyzed Analyst; The Sorrows of Young Werther and Goethe''s Understanding of Melancholia; Death as the Ultimate Castration Anxiety; Sylvia Plath and the Failure of Emotional Self-Repair through Poetry; Gender Identity Disorder in Boys; The Growth of Logical Thinking: Piaget''s Contribution to Ego Psychology; On a Central Psychic Constellation; Cognitive Development and Female Psychology; The First Year of Life; The Developmental Profile. The issues grappled with in this book (and I have only listed a few of them) have been engaged with in great depth and sensitivity and no reader who accompanies Dr. Silverman on this intellectual odyssey can come away without having his/her mind challenged by the scope of insight and original thinking contained in these disparate chapters. Each chapter features a mind in total engagement with an analytic idea that troubles him, fascinates him and will not let him rest until he has learnt all that can be learnt from the intellectual encounter.

From the Introduction:What were the facets of Queen Victoria''s character and position that resulted in her name encapsulating the values of an entire era? There was her unique status as a female sovereign (the fifth since 1066); her longevity; and the brilliant political and military successes that had been achieved in her name. Then, the Queen was gifted with precisely those personal qualities that she admired in the young Princess May of Teck,* whom she enthusiastically appraised in 1890 as a bride for her grandson, Prince Albert Victor of Wales, heir to the heir apparent in the direct line to the throne. As a potential Queen Consort, May personified Queen Victoria''s own ideals. In a letter to her daughter Vicky, the Queen described May as "the reverse of oberflachlich [shallow]...May is a particularly nice girl...reserved ''til you know her well...always occupied...[and] well-informed" (Pope-Hennessy, 1959, p. 207). In fact, May Teck was almost phobically shy, as was the Queen herself, but the public reserve, the resolute seriousness, the earnest striving to do that which seemed to her right and just-those are among the signature aspects of temperament that Queen Victoria shared with Princess May.From the age of 42 until the end of her life Queen Victoria embraced widowhood as her principal personal identity. The birthday of Prince Albert and the anniversary of his death became the anchor points of her calendar, two focal events around which everything else in her life was organized. Both dates were observed almost religiously by the Queen for the remainder of her life and with increasing emotion as her years of widowhood advanced. It is perhaps the famous portrait by the Austrian painter Heinrich von Angeli that best encompasses Queen Victoria''s dual post-Albert identities as widow and Queen Regnant, displaying her black mourner''s dress and lace bridal veil, as well as the Sovereign''s distinctive Garter sash. This evocative portrait was commissioned in 1899, at a time when Queen Victoria was free from serious depression, having largely recovered from her prolonged grief over Albert''s death by the early 1880s. Nevertheless, the Queen''s facial expression in the von Angeli portrait evokes weariness and vulnerability. Reproduced on the cover of this book, the picture also portends Victoria''s immediate future: In the final 5 months of her life the Queen was to be in a continuous state of mourning as new losses mounted. A Romantic in a decidedly post-Romantic era, Queen Victoria in old age was to confront these new bereavements in her own emotive and hyperbolic style.

Chance can change a life, and it certainly changed mine. As a third-year undergraduate at Harvard, I overheard a conversation about a college volunteer program in the local state mental hospital, and for the next two years I volunteered on the back wards of the hospital. Each week, I would talk with Mary, a gray-haired, tired woman who had been sitting quietly in a corner for three years. Over the academic year that we talked, she regained enough function to leave the hospital, and I believe our conversations were part of what made that happen. My experience with Mary would prove to change the course of my life.After graduating from college, I went on to graduate study in academic psychology, but I changed direction as I realized how much I missed the experience with Mary and other patients. I went on to medical school and from there to psychiatry. Now, more than fifty years later, I have two stories to tell: my own, and how psychiatry changed during my working lifetime.I spent my career as an academic psychiatrist working in a public hospital, where I taught young physicians and other trainees to take care of sick, poor people while also caring for patients myself. I loved my work; but at the same time, I saw how psychiatry was changing, and I was troubled by what I saw. When I trained in the 1960s, psychiatrists cared for patients as individuals. Now, they push pills and promise more than they can deliver. In this book, I describe that change and I offer a proposal for a different and better psychiatry-one that returns psychiatry to its roots and is more helpful to patients and more fulfilling for psychiatrists.

Following graduation from SUNY-Downstate Medical School in Brooklyn, New York, Michael Mosesson had intended to pursue a Surgical career under the aegis of his former Professor, Clarence Dennis. But life took a different turn. He wound up instead in The United States Public Health Service, stationed at the Division of Biologics Standards on The National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus. During his experiences with research and governmental regulatory control, he began to investigate the circulating precursor of a Fibrin Clot, Fibrinogen. Fibrinogen plays a critical role in many physiological and disease conditions, such as blood clotting, wound healing, hemophilic conditions, thrombotic conditions such as deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, stroke, heart attacks, and microvascular thromboses (all of which have occurred in COVID-19 patients).Mosesson''s surgical plans never materialized, and he turned instead to Fibrinogen, a subject that would involve him as a Scientist and Clinician for the next fifty-two years. In this book, he writes about his investigative, organizational, and societal experiences:ΓÇó Production of Transgenic Human Fibrinogen in cows'' milk.ΓÇó Discovery of the plasma form of a ubiquitous tissue protein known as Fibronectin.ΓÇó Identification and isolation of circulating partially degraded forms of Fibrinogen, Fibrinogen Catabolites.ΓÇó Investigations of Structural and Functional Properties of an Assembled Fibrin Clot, as well as the long-lasting controversy they engendered.ΓÇó A 50 year-long search to identify a potent inhibitor of clot lysis (Fibrinolysis) found in fibrinogen preparations that is now known as ╬▒2-Antiplasmin.ΓÇó Studies of Dysfibrinogenemias, congenital fibrinogen abnormalities.ΓÇó Developing a Transgenic Humanized Mouse Fibrinogen model to study the function of the blood clotting inhibitor known as Antithrombin I.ΓÇó Founding the International Fibrinogen Research Society.Mosesson includes a chapter describing events that accompanied his career as a Pilot, covering a period extending from his days at NIH until his retirement fifty years later. There is also a section written by his friend and colleague, John S. Finlayson, who described the transition of The Division of Biologics Standards to a subsidiary of The Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Finally, he provides an Annotated Bibliography with commentaries and personal insights into many of his published works. The presentations of scientific subject matter are accurate although technical details are minimized for clarity. Narratives are developed around personal interactions and involvements with colleagues, associates, friends, and adversaries, highlighted by many humorous events and anecdotes.

MEMORY''S EYES is a contemporary New York Oedipus novel. It is written for readers who enjoy playing with concepts and storylines, here namely the classical Oedipus myth, Sophocles'' three Theban plays, the psychoanalytical concept of the Oedipus complex, and its pop-cultural adaptations in cartoons and jokes. Tragic and funny, playful, but also challenging, readers will find themselves simultaneously knowing and not knowing, anticipating and surprised by how the truth slowly emerges.In Memory''s Eyes Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau renews the emotional richness of psychoanalysis and ancient myth. Even more strikingly, she illuminates the combination of those two realms in the lives of contemporary characters, culpable yet sympathetic in their sometimes outrageous, heart-rending, or silly behavior. Ann, a candidate at a psychoanalytic institute, tells the story of her Oedipal clan and its flawed family members. Along with its antic comedy, Ann''s tale maintains a profound love for her discipline and the redeeming power of insight. --Ellen Pinsky, PsyD, author of Death and Fallibility in the Psychoanalytic Encounter: Mortal Gifts.In America''s Thebes, Antigone and Oedipus are alive again in an array of compelling characters. Ann, the novel''s narrator, driven by intense curiosity and the capacity to remember and dream her parents'' lives, uncovers complex family secrets--ones that reveal her origins and free her from the shackles of her past. Schmidt-Hellerau gives us a tale of vivid imagination and psychological depth.--Daniel Jacobs, MD, author of The Distance from HomeCordelia Schmidt-Hellerau, Ph.D. is a Training and Supervising Analyst of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and the Swiss Psychoanalytic Society. She has published numerous papers and three books on metapsychology, clinical issues and applied psychoanalysis. Her 2018 publication of Driven to Survive was a finalist of the American Board & Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize. Her first novel, Rousseaus Traum, was published in 2019 in German. Since 2017 she is the Chair of the IPA in Culture Committee. She works in private practice in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

How often do we hear, “I don’t treat children—it’s too hard to work with their parents”? Parent work undoubtedly brings many challenges. This casebook brings together the voices of 40 psychoanalysts from around the world to illustrate contemporary views about whether and how to work with parents.  The ideas proposed in the model of  dynamic concurrent parent work are illustrated and explored here through clinical vignettes, commentaries from experienced child and adolescent analysts, and reflections by the volume’s editors. The value of parent work is affirmed as a substantive contribution to pragmatic, effective, and life-changing child and adolescent psychoanalysis.

The Plumsock Papers are written by candidates and new graduates of the Institute of the Contemporary Freudian Society (CFS) of New York. In publishing these creative papers, the CFS is passing the torch to the younger generation, ensuring the society’s own longevity as an institution, and contributing to the vitality of psychoanalysis itself. In this rich collection of Plumsock Papers we read the creative contributions of young analysts attending to contemporary issues such as the co-construction of analysis, on-line treatment, analytic work with Asperger’s Syndrome patients, the integration of different psychoanalytic theories, analytic work with older patients, and so much more. Many of Sigmund Freud’s early students began their psychoanalytic training when they were in their 20s or early 30s. They were given a voice as young analysts and, not surprisingly, were extraordinarily creative and successful. The CFS has demonstrated great wisdom in creating a forum for giving new analysts a voice. The Plumsock Papers offer the reader an exciting preview into the creative spirit of the next generation of psychoanalysis. Daniel S. Benveniste, PhD – author of The Interwoven Lives of Sigmund, Anna and W. Ernest Freud: Three Generations of Psychoanalysis.                “This collection of essays by Plumsock Prize winning psychoanalysts is a must  read for psychoanalysts, analytic patients and others interested in psychoanalysis.  Talented analysts invite the reader into their consulting rooms where they confront the challenges inherent in patients who are beset with remnants of  anxieties from childhood, manifestations of overpowering drives, object relations disruptions,  traumatic life situations, fragile defenses, less than good enough interpersonal relationships and poor compromise formations. Rich clinical examples let the reader form his/her own impressions of what the analysts think and say and reflect upon  patient responses.The editors and contributors to this anthology, along with Ed Fancher for  initiating the Plumsock Prize, deserve our appreciation for their role in keeping psychoanalysis alive.”                Lucille Spira, Ph.D./LCSW, Member of NYSPP, Co-Chair APsaA Discussion Group: Towards an Understanding of Loneliness and Aloneness; Gradiva Award Winner with Arlene Kramer Richards and Arthur A. Lynch. Recent Publication: Co-editor with Arlene Kramer Richards and Merle Molofsky: Pedro Almodóvar : A Cinema of Desire Passion and Compulsion, (IPBooks).

Some background. I am a psychologist and psychoanalyst. For the past thirty years, I have been in private practice, treating children, adolescents and adults in Ridgewood, New Jersey, a suburban town not too far from New York City.I have had experiences which figure in some of these stories. Before becoming a psychoanalyst, I was an attorney who lived and worked on the Navajo and Hopi reservations in Arizona and New Mexico. I also represented Native Americans in Denver, Colorado.In addition,. I was a civil rights worker in 1965 for the Southern Christian Leadership Council, Martin Luther King’s organization, primarily working out of Atlanta and also in Fort Valley, Georgia, a small town south of Atlanta. For that matter, I have always enjoyed diverse culture, and have often tried on vacations to explore other cultures than my own, which also figures in some of these stories.Last, I have an abiding interest in parapsychology or the study of psychic phenomena. I have written academically on the subject and taught it and advocated that psychoanalysts and mental health professionals in general be more aware of these phenomena. Psychic phenomena plays a role in a few of the stories contained here.The short stories and poems were written after a work day of seeing patients or on weekends. In ways that are not at all obvious, my patients over the years have inspired some of them, In psychoanalysis, in writing short stories, in crafting poetry, my hope has always been to approach the intimate heart of our lives and of living, with both its terror and beauty; and to question our Western society assumptions of how our world (and our being in it) is constructed. Psychoanalysis, parapsychology, anthropology, and short stories and poems — at their best — lead to us wonder about the world. Hopefully, this collection will inspire the reader to wonder too.

In the last years of her life, I noticed two significant alterations in my mother: her increased preoccupation with her Holocaust past and changes in her memory. It took me years to accept the change that took place in her memory because I had always been in awe of her astounding capacity for recall. When I was two-years old she recited endless Russian poetry and nursery rhymes, and when I was an adult she would recite these same poems and ask if I remembered them. She helped me with my algebra when I was in high school, performing complicated mathematical calculations in her head.  The decline of her sharp memory, at first barely perceptible, slowly picked up speed and ultimately became the progression of Alzheimer’s.Unlike her stock of retained knowledge, when it came to answering questions about our life during and after the war, she offered a confused narrative. Only when she was much older but prior to her loss of memory did she change her attitude about the past and develop a growing interest in learning more about the Holocaust. She would speak to me about books and articles she read, films she watched and stories she heard. When this kind of remembrance began to occur, I experienced an uneasy feeling, as if my mother were illegitimately identifying herself as a Holocaust survivor. I say illegitimately because as I was growing up she had set herself apart from my father and his extended family. My father’s family felt connected to their past and spoke of family and friends lost in the Holocaust. Gradually, I came to understand that she was identifying and recognizing her own story in what others had  remembered,  experienced and written about the war years, specifically about the Holocaust. As she shared her newly awakened discoveries with me, she frequently followed up by saying, “Phyllis, you know, that’s what we went through.”

Theory, in many instances, is the microscope without which we could not grasp certain clinical states at all and assess their meaning. It is therefore decisive that psychoanalysis, as a science, develop a theory of structural ontogenesis as a binding basic concept and reference system. Without such a basic theory psychoanalysis will suffocate from theoretical entropy. The crucial phenomenon, in any case, is that the brain is giving itself a fundamental representational structure—one which directly results from the system properties of the representation-bound perception, and thus from experience. Each and every study of brain function must reckon with this autonomous structure which is the structural frame within which mental functioning occurs and consciousnessoriginates. This representational world is the field of psychoanalysis. PETER ZAGERMANN, PHD, is an IPA child, adolescent and adult psychoanalyst living andworking in Munich, Germany. 

A Sinister Subtraction paints a realistic and unflinching portrait of “The Memory Wars” of the 1990s, one of the most painfully conflicted and bitterly disputed episodes in the history of the mental health professions. Did accusations of childhood abuse stemming from long-unavailable memories deserve serious consideration? Or should they be dismissed as artefacts unlikely to be true? The clash of these polarized perspectives inflicted painful consequences upon many among the accusers and the accused, and wounded numerous professionals caught up in these angry debates. A mystery and courtroom drama solidly grounded in psychological science, A Sinister Subtraction provides a penetrating study of the lasting impact of childhood sexual, the ongoing vulnerability to revictimization that too often follows mistreated children into their adult lives, and the efforts of abusers to discredit the claims of their accusers.