Torment Me, But Don't Abandon Me

Léon Wurmser, M.D., is clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of West Virginia and training and supervising analyst at the New York Freudian Society. Former professor of psychiatry and director of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program at the University of Maryland, he has also taught extensively throughout Europe. Dr. Wurmser trained as a psychiatrist in his native Switzerland and received his psychoanalytic training in this country. Author of 300 articles and coeditor of the six-volume textbook Psychiatric Foundations in Medicine, he has written several books such as The Hidden Dimension and The Mask of Shame. Dr. Wurmser is a recipient of the 1997 Margrit Egner Foundation Award in recognition of outstanding work in anthropologic psychology and philosophy. He maintains a private practice in psychotherapy in Towson, Maryland.

• 1 PrologueChapter 2 Sleeping Giant or Fossil?Chapter 3 "The Wall of Stone" - Broken Self and Broken RealityChapter 4 Character PerversionChapter 5 The Way from Ithaca to Golgatha - The Analysis of a Masochistic Sexual and Character PerversionChapter 6 Superego as Herald of ResentmentChapter 7 Tragic Character and the Devastating Power of AbsolutenessChapter 8 "The Envy of the All-powerful Goddess" and Womb Envy - Some Basic EquationsChapter 9 The Core Fantasies - "From Abyss to Abyss"Chapter 10 Technique and Relationship in the Treatment of Severe Neuroses11 Bibliography

This book pulls into focus the internal meanings of conflict, including the variety of conflicts within the superego, conflicts among ideals of the self, internal loyalty conflicts, etc. Thus, the analysand's attitudes towards conflict itself can be approached with Buber's I-Thou relationship rather than his I-It relationship, which makes analytic work essentially a humanistic enterprise having to do with respect for human suffering.