Jason Aronson Torment Me, But Don't Abandon Me: Psychoanalysis of the Severe Neuroses in a New Key

Torment Me, But Don't Abandon Me: Psychoanalysis of the Severe Neuroses in a New Key offers analysts and psychodynamic therapists an innovative way of understanding the theoretical intersection of masochism, perversion, shame, guilt, narcissism substance abuse. This constellation of psychopathology frequently is seen in clinical practice and often proves to be a difficult personality organization to treat. While Dr. Wurmser relies on elements of classical analysis to construct his theoretical framework (including a theoretical and clinical analysis of super ego analysis), he incorporates contemporary relational and intersubjective perspectives understanding that the analyst's involvement of the "self" is critical for the successful treatment of the serious neuroses. Review Leon Wurmser, more than any living psychoanalyst, has a profound grasp of the centrality of judgments of conscience in the deep dynamics of conflict in the traumatized patient. Torment Me, But Don't Abandon Me: Psychoanalysis of the Severe Neuroses in a New Key deepens the lines of thinking developed in The Power of the Inner Judge and carries their theoretical and technical implications to a new synthetic level, one that avoids the simplistic dichotomies between conflict versus deficit, conflict versus trauma, neurosis versus borderline, and one person versus two person formulations.--Melvin R. Lansky, M.D., training and supervising analyst, The New Center for Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles; clinical professor of psychiatry, UCLA Medica This book is destined to be a classic. Leon Wurmser gives strong clinical and theoretical evidence for the feasibility of psychoanalyzing patients with "severe neuroses," patients believed by still too many to be "un-analyzable." He does so with sound clinical acumen, explanation, and remarkable scholarship. A unique contribution, this book offers the reader the thoughts of a brilliant clinician and theoretician who spent decades of his professional life on the questions the book addresses. It is a rich interweaving of psychoanalytic thought and practice with literary, philosophical, and Talmudic thought regarding the questions of morality, conscience, guilt and shame, bringing these to bear on furthering our understanding of the torturing clinical problems they inflict on so many humans.--Henri Parens, M.D., professor of psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, PA; training and supervising analyst (adult and child), Psycho In Torment Me, But Don't Abandon Me, Dr. Wurmser unfolds his subtle conflict, defense, and affect theories. He views the superego as the sleeping giant of psychoanalysis; integrating classical and contemporary concepts he places special emphasis on shame, rooted in conflicts of seeing and being seen. The high literary quality and the broad cultural horizon make reading this book a fascinating experience that goes beyond the limits of the specialist field.--Friedrich-Wilhelm Eickhoff, M.D., training and supervising analyst, German Psychoanalytical Association; Tübingen; co-editor, Jahrbuch der PsychoanalyseDr. Wurmser has written a marvelous book, full of wisdom, steeped in a life of compassionate psychoanalytic practice and passionate scholarship. With classical analytic theory and practice bred in his bones, he is steeped in modern psychoanalysis, philosophy, science and literature. But at the heart of this gem of a book is the deep understanding of his patients. His unfolding analytic narratives grip the reader as he describes the encounter of two people engaged to transform the deadening constraints of pain and trauma, to give birth to new vitality, to humanize deadness and to connect patients' efforts to survive to the fears they have suffered. We watch in awe as analysis breathes vitality into their dreams, endeavors, relationships and futures. This is a book to inspire the veteran therapist and the inexperienced analytic aspirant alike.--David E. Scha