In The Violence of Emotions the author marries an ability to introduce the reader to the intimate climate of an analytic session with a passionate rereading of Bion. To emphasize both the empirical nature of psychoanalysis and its extraordinary capacity to engender illuminating hypotheses concerning the functioning of the mind, clinical examples alternate with theoretical argument. The psychoanalytic model espoused by Giuseppe Civitarese in his approach to both is analytic field theory. Developed by various authors, including Ferro, commencing with Bion and continued with contributions from the Barangers, Grotstein and Ogden, the theory of the analytic field reveals the social nature of subjectivity and, in clinical work, the intersubjective and dreamlike climate in which a psychoanalytic session unfolds. This leads to a new way of interpreting the facts of analysis. As such, topics of discussion include: transcending the caesura as Bion’s theoretical method hypochondria as de-subjectivation and narrative genre in analysis the aesthetic conflict and alfa function Bion’s search for ambiguity the casting of characters in the analytic dialogue metaphor of text and translation in Freud and Bion. Yet the book has an even more specific objective, focusing attention as it does on the central importance of emotions in mental life and of aesthetic experience as the model of what truly happens in analysis. This is an aspect which the author rediscovers and explores in the thought of Bion and his successors, and which he regards as a way of investigating the deepest and most primitive levels of mental life. This book will be of great interest to psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and psychotherapists.

Broken family bonds can be one of the most intense sources of conflict. This book - which provides vital insights into the dynamics of family and other forms of violence - explores the damage caused to familial and social bonds by escalating feelings of shame during marital quarrels. Theories and research from large-scale conflict, marital dispute and communication processes are reviewed and provide a background for Retzinger's new integrative theory, which focuses on social bonds. The theory is applied to four case studies of marital quarrels in order to advance understanding of the escalation and resolution of conflict. The book includes a description of an intensive case study method for analyzing discourse and provides

What causes violence? Thomas Scheff and Suzanne Retzinger deftly explore this age-old question. What emerges is an extraordinarily innovative explanation that gives fresh hope for reducing physical and emotional violence in the world and in our times. The authors provide remarkable new insights into the sources of destructive conflict. They explore human interaction in psychotherapy sessions, marital quarrels, TV game shows, and high politics. Their original interpretation of a classic work of fiction, Goethe's The Sufferings of Young Werther, and case studies of Hitler and his master architect, Albert Speer, offer additional, powerful illustrations of their theory: violence arises from the denial of emotions particularly from the denial of shame and from hidden alienation in relationships. Researchers in violence, psychotherapists, and criminal justice professionals will welcome this thoughtful inquiry that integrates different disciplines and spans topics from alienation and conscience building to the hidden world of gesture, implication, and emotion. Scheff and Retzinger's examples and recommendations furnish a practical blueprint for understanding and reducing physical and emotional violence at both the interpersonal and societal levels. Social and behavioral scientists will be stimulated by the novel approach to theory and method in this work. It also has practical implications for the fields of psychotherapy, education, criminal justice, and international relations.

Psychoanalytic theory has developed very rapidly in recent years across many schools of thought. One of the most popular builds on the work of Wilfred Bion. Contemporary Bionian Theory and Technique in Psychoanalysis provides a concise and comprehensive introductory overview of the latest thinking in this area, with additional contemporary theoretical influences from Freud, Klein, and Winnicottian thought. Through explorations of the history, theory, and clinical practice of psychoanalysis, Ferro and contributors reveal the changes and developments it has undergone in the research laboratory of the consulting room. Contemporary Bionian Theory and Technique in Psychoanalysis brings together the theories, clinical practice, and techniques that have gradually been developed in a variety of cultural contexts, exploring how they are understood, clarified and enriched by various analysts in daily practice. The book is circular, opening many paths of access to the reader. It aims to revive an experience of creative dialogue exactly as occurs in analysis when two minds think and dream together to transform each other reciprocally. The book sets forth, for instance, a new model of the mind called the oneiric model, taking inspiration from Bion’s conceptualizations and field theory. Covering central psychoanalytic concepts such as transference, dreams and child analysis, this book provides an excellent introduction to the most important contemporary features of Bionian theory and practice. Contemporary Bionian Theory and Technique in Psychoanalysis will appeal to ppsychoanalysts and psychotherapists in training and practice, as well as students of psychiatry and psychology.

This book consists of a selection of psychoanalytic works that discuss a variety of theoretical and clinical issues within the perspective of the growing body of Bionian studies.

Violence and Emotions in Early Modern Europe examines the purposes for which specific forms of violence and particular emotional states functioned, how they operated in relation to each other, or indeed how one provoked, sustained or diminished the other. These twelve original essays demonstrate the complexities of violence and emotions and the myriad possibilities of their inter-relationships. They emphasize the great efforts that were made by early modern societies to control modes of violence and emotional regimes to achieve positive as well as negative effects, such as creating order, healing, and bringing individuals and communities together around productive identities. Authors consider legal documents, news reports, memoirs, letters, confraternity statutes, and medical consultations to investigate the bodily and textual practices in which violent and emotional acts were created, supported and disseminated to investigate the power, aims, effect and outcomes of relationships between violence and emotions. The chapters look at a range of topics and countries including Renaissance Italy and sixteenth-century Germany, France in the grip of the religious wars, and England’s Civil Wars as well as a wide range of topics including murder, punishment, community healing, insults, threats, prophecy and medical and devotional practices. This collection will be essential reading for students and scholars of the history of emotions or violence.

Honour, Violence and Emotions in History is the first book to draw on emerging cross-disciplinary scholarship on the study of emotions to analyse the history of honour and violence across a broad range of cultures and regions. Written by leading cultural and social historians from around the world, the book considers how emotions - particularly shame, anger, disgust, jealousy, despair and fear - have been provoked and expressed through culturally-embedded and historically specific understandings of honour. The collection explores a range of contexts, from 17th-century China to 18th-century South Africa and 20th-century Europe, offering a broad and wide-ranging analysis of the interrelationships between honour, violence and emotions in history. This ground-breaking book will be of interest to all researchers studying the relationship between violence and the emotions.

Alphonso Lingis is an original among American philosophers. An eloquent and insightful commentator on continental philosophers, he is also a phenomenologist who has gone to live in many lands. Dangerous Emotions continues the line of inquiry begun in Abuses, taking the reader to Easter Island, Japan, Java, and Brazil as Lingis poses a new range of questions and brings his extraordinary descriptive skills to bear on innocence and the love of crime, the relationships of beauty with lust and of joy with violence and violation. He explores the religion of animals, the force in blessings and in curses. When the sphere of work and reason breaks down, and in catastrophic events we catch sight of cosmic time, our anxiety is mixed with exhilaration and ecstasy. More than acceptance of death, can philosophy understand joy in dying? Haunting and courageous, Lingis's writing has generated intense interest and debate among gender and cultural theorists as well as philosophers, and Dangerous Emotions is certain to introduce his work to an ever broader circle of readers.

In recent years, it’s become increasingly clear that emotion plays a central role in global politics. For example, people readily care about acts of terrorism and humanitarian crises because they appeal to our compassion for human suffering. These struggles also command attention where social interactions have the power to produce or intensify the emotional responses of those who participate in them. From passionate protests to poignant speeches, Andrew A. G. Ross analyzes high-emotion events with an eye to how they shape public sentiment and finds that there is no single answer. The politically powerful play to the public’s emotions to advance their political aims, and such appeals to emotion also often serve to sustain existing values and institutions. But the affective dimension can produce profound change, particularly when a struggle in the present can be shown to line up with emotionally resonant events from the past. Extending his findings to well-studied conflicts, including the War on Terror and the violence in Rwanda and the Balkans, Ross identifies important sites of emotional impact missed by earlier research focused on identities and interests.

Like social scientists, reporters are expected to be immune to, and even aloof from, the pain and suffering they chronicle. Daring to Feel: Violence, the News Media, and Their Emotions challenges this journalistic mandate, particularly as it pertains to the emotional topic of violence. Interviewing journalists who have covered some of the worst tragedies in our nation's history, Jody Santos shows what happens when the news media dare to feel.