Haunted by Parents

Leonard Shengold

Published by Yale University Press 2008

Haunted by Parents

Leonard Shengold

https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300134681

Overview
Contents

About this book

In this book the eminent psychoanalyst Leonard Shengold looks at why some people are resistant to change, even when it seems to promise a change for the better. Drawing on a lifetime of clinical experience as well as wide readings of world literature, Shengold shows how early childhood relationships with parents can lead to a powerful conviction that change means loss.
Dr. Shengold, who is well known for his work on the lasting effects of childhood trauma and child abuse in such seminal books as Soul Murder and Soul Murder Revisited, continues his exploration into the consequences of early psychological injury and loss. In the examples of his patients and in the lives and work of such figures as Edna St. Vincent Millay, William Wordsworth, and Henrik Ibsen, Shengold looks at the different ways in which unconscious impressions connected with early experiences and fantasies about parents are integrated into individual lives. He shows the difficulties he’s encountered with his patients in raising these memories to the conscious level where they can be known and owned; and he also shows, in his survey of literary figures, how these memories can become part of the creative process.
Haunted by Parents offers a deeply humane reflection on the values and limitations of therapy, on memory and the lingering effects of the past, and on the possibility of recognizing the promise of the future.

Author / Editor information

Leonard Shengold, M.D., is a training analyst at New York University Psychoanalytic Institute and clinical professor of psychiatry, New York University Medical School. He lives in New York City.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
I. A Literary Example of Haunting Benjamin Spock Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
II. A Clinical Illustration of Some of My Main Themes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	20
III. Knowing, Change, and Good and Bad Expectations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	28
IV. Beginnings and Wordsworth’s “Immortality Ode” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	38
V. Change Means Loss: Spring and Summer Must Become Winter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	50
VI. The Myth of Demeter and Persephone Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
VII. Another Dream of Death in a Garden Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
VIII. A Clinical and a Literary Example Edna St. Vincent Millay Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	77
IX. A Second Literary Example Leonard Woolf Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	101
X. A Third Literary Example Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
XI. On Listening, Knowing, and Owning Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
XII. Gardens, Unweeded Gardens, and the Garden of Eden— Death and Transience Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
XIII. “The promise” and Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	197
XIV. What Do I Know? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
Postscript: Two Relevant Quotations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	232
Appendix: Hartmann on the Genetic Point of View and Object Constancy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249

Language: English
Publisher: Yale University Press
Pages
- Main content: 272
Illustrations
- Other: 1

eBook

Published: October 1, 2008
ISBN: 9780300134681