Trauma, Guilt and Reparation

Heinz Weiss, M.D., is the Head of the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine at the Robert Bosch Hospital in Stuttgart. He is also the head of the Medical Division and member of the directorate of the Sigmund-Freud-Institute, Frankfurt/Main, and Chair of the Education Section of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.

• Foreword by John SteinerPrefaceChapter One: Trauma, guilt and reparation: A psychoanalytic paradigmChapter Two: Impediments to reparation: Resentment, shame and wrath – the significance of the gazeChapter Three: Repetition compulsion and the primitive super-ego: Attempts at reparation in borderline patientsChapter Four: The 'Tower': Submission and illusory security in a traumatic defence organisationChapter Five: Trauma, reparation and the limits of reparationChapter Six: Traumatic remembering and ecliptic forgetting: on the riddle of time in Jenny Erpenbeck's The End of DaysChapter Seven: Reparation and gratitudeBibliography

"Despite the fact that in recent decades the importance of trauma in the production of adult pathology has been rediscovered, there are few works that fall into the clinic to show in detail the specific link between suffering and original trauma. Weiss's book does it; he questions the quality of the trauma, from the emotional to the violent, and the question arises of how it is possible to repair the damage and what the relationship between the new object, the analyst, and the permanence of the internalized traumatic experience can be. This is an in-depth and well-documented study with rich and detailed clinical cases . In particular, the author studies the problem of reparation, mourning resentment, revenge, shame and finally of gratitude. A book that invites us to think about a complex but essential theoretical and clinical theme in psychoanalytic treatment." --Franco de Masi, Training and Supervising Analyst of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society and former President of Centro Milanese di Psicoanalisi and Secretary of the Training Milanese Institute"Severely disturbed and traumatized patients present analysts and therapists with some of the most complex and difficult challenges in contemporary clinical practice. Agonizing guilt, long lasting grievance, hatred and rage complicate and threaten to derail the reparative and mourning processes needed for recovery. Based on the author’s extensive clinical experience, Trauma, Guilt and Reparation offers readers a thoughtful, richly illustrated, comprehensive approach to these problems and serves to help advance analytic understanding and practice." --Howard B. Levine, MD, Editor-in-Chief, The Routledge W.R. Bion Studies Series