Psychic or Psychotic? Memoirs of a Happy Medium is the true, frequently funny story of the author's struggle since childhood to appear "normal" while being bombarded with psychic information. She shares her dramatic near-death experience foretold in a dre

Essentially clinical in its approach, Psychic Retreats discusses the problem of patients who are 'stuck' and with whom it is difficult to make meaningful contact. John Steiner, an experienced psychoanalyst, uses new developments in Kleinian theory to explain how this happens. He examines the way object relationships and defences can be organized into complex structures which lead to a personality and an analysis becoming rigid and stuck, with little opportunity for development or change. These systems of defences are pathological organisations of the personality: John Steiner describes them as 'psychic retreats', into which the patient can withdraw to avoid contact both with the analyst and with reality. To provide a background to these original and controversial concepts, the author builds on more established ideas such as Klein's distinction between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, and briefly reviews previous work on pathological organizations of the personality. He illustrates his discussion with detailed clinical material, with examples of the way psychic retreats operate to provide a respite from both paranoid-schizoid and depressive anxieties. He looks at the way such organizations function as a defence against unbearable guilt and describes the mechanism by which fragmentation of the personality can be reversed so the lost parts of the self can be regained and reintegrated in to the personality. Psychic Retreats is written with the practising psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in mind. The emphasis is therefore clinical throughout the book, which concludes with a chapter on the technical problems which arise in the treatment of such severely ill patients.

The new edition of this successful text builds on the very latest research to present an original and unique exploration of the psychology of both spirituality and psychosis. The editor brings together fascinating perspectives from a broad range of distinguished contributors. This new edition covers the most recent body of research, both qualitative and quantitative, in its exploration of the interface between psychosis and spirituality, and investigation into anomalous experiences Ten new chapters added and the remaining text completely updated New to this edition is an expanded clinical section, relevant to clinicians working with psychosis Offers a fundamental rethink of the concept of psychosis, and proposes new insights into spirituality Includes feature chapters from a distinguished list of contributors across a broad range of disciplines, including Peter Fenwick, Peter Chadwick, David Kingdon, Gordon Claridge, Neil Douglas Klotz and David Lukoff

When Lily falls under the spell of renowned psychic Princess Eva, skeptic Kate puts herself in danger to save Lily from becoming the next victim in a string of mysterious deaths surrounding the psychic and her brooding manager.

Author Nancy du Tertre, “the Skeptical PsychicTM,” takes you on a journey to find the answer to these questions and more in Psychic Intuition. She became psychic in mid-life after years of intensive study and training, and is now a believer that everyone has the potential to tap into their intuition and understand the world at a deeper level. Psychic Intuition bridges the gap between skeptics who can analyze but don’t experience psychic phenomena, and believers who have the experiences but lack the ability to analyze. This book explains, for the first time, how psychic ability works in the brain.

Betty Joseph's work has become an outstanding influence in the development and theory of psychoanalytic technique in the Kleinian tradition. This collection of her most important papers examines the development of her thought and shows why a crucial part of her theory and practice is concerned with the detailed, sensitive scrutiny of the therapeutic process itself. Fundamental and controversial topics explored and discussed include projective identification, transference and countertransference, unconscious phantasy, and Kleinian views on envy and the death instinct.

Judith Butler's new book considers the way in which psychic life is generated by the social operation of power, and how that social operation of power is concealed and fortified by the psyche that it produces. It combines social theory, philosophy, and psychoanalysis in novel ways, and offers a more sustained analysis of the theory of subject formation implicit in her previous books.

The publication of this volune represents the first in a planned series of special publications on topics of major interest to workers in the fields of psychiatry and psychology. The series will be en titled The Downstate Series of Research in Psychiatry and Psychology and is the outcome of a series of discussions among several senior members of the Department of Psychiatry held about four years ago. Included in this group, were Drs. Benjamin Kissin, Henri Begleiter, Leonard Rosenblum, Herbert Pardes, Norbert Freedman, and myself. The talks were initiated by Dr. Pardes, now Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado, and the resultant decision was t6 hold three day symposia, hopefully of such excellence that the published papers of each symposium would represent a significant con tribution to some particular aspect of human psychology. This deci sion necessitated the choice of suitable topics and distinguished speakers who would present original work coordinated into an inte grated framework based upon a selected topic.

Metapsychological Perspectives on Psychic Survival explores the integration of traumatic helplessness in the course of psychoanalytic treatment. Based on the author¿s many years of experience of working with psychotic and severely traumatised patients, this book offers guidelines to approach extreme psychic trauma in the therapeutic setting. Simo Salonen links psychic representation of the elementary drive phenomena and metaphorical thinking to¿primary identification understood as a mode of object finding. The collapse of this connection signifies a radical psychic trauma, the integration of which into the temporal continuity of an individual¿s life is an essential task for psychoanalysis. Another key element of this book is Salonen¿s notion of the primal representative matrix, referring to a resource of primary narcissism that an individual has been endowed with, carrying vital meanings. Also explored is the crucial work of mourning, as the result of which the impoverished ego may recover its primary narcissistic resources.¿ Using insights from numerous case studies, Salonen offers a new way of understanding severe trauma, which can be used to advance both psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice. Metapsychological Perspectives on Psychic Survival will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781472453983, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivative 4.0 license. Experiences of hearing the voice of God (or angels, demons, or other spiritual beings) have generally been understood either as religious experiences or else as a feature of mental illness. Some critics of traditional religious faith have dismissed the visions and voices attributed to biblical characters and saints as evidence of mental disorder. However, it is now known that many ordinary people, with no other evidence of mental disorder, also hear voices and that these voices not infrequently include spiritual or religious content. Psychological and interdisciplinary research has shed a revealing light on these experiences in recent years, so that we now know much more about the phenomenon of "hearing voices" than ever before. The present work considers biblical, historical, and scientific accounts of spiritual and mystical experiences of voice hearing in the Christian tradition in order to explore how some voices may be understood theologically as revelatory. It is proposed that in the incarnation, Christian faith finds both an understanding of what it is to be fully human (a theological anthropology), and God’s perfect self-disclosure (revelation). Within such an understanding, revelatory voices represent a key point of interpersonal encounter between human beings and God.