Understanding and Coping with Failure: Psychoanalytic perspectives

Brent Willock is President of the Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Board Member of the Canadian Institute for Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and on the faculty of the Institute for the Advancement of Self Psychology. He is the editor with Lori C. Bohm and Rebecca Coleman Curtis of Comparative-Integrative Psychoanalysis (Analytic Press, 2007), On Deaths and Endings: Psychoanalysts’ reflections on finality, transformations and new beginnings (Routledge, 2007) and Loneliness and Longing: Conscious and unconscious aspects (Routledge, 2011).Rebecca Coleman Curtis is Professor of Psychology at Adelphi University, and Faculty and Supervisor at the William Alanson White Institute and Supervisor at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, New York.Lori C. Bohm is Supervising Analyst, Faculty and Director at the Center for Applied Psychoanalysis and Intensive Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy programs at the William Alanson White Institute. She is Psychotherapy Supervisor in the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program at City College of the City University of New York.

• Coleman Curtis, Frank, Introduction. Part I: Failing and Forgiving. Holloway, Fail Better. Loszak, Failing with Grace—How a Golden Thread of Forgiveness Runs Through Psychoanalysis. Part II: Society-Wide Failure. Benton, Success and Failure: Cultural and Psychoanalytic Perspectives. Allured, Blind Spot in the Analytic Lens: Our Failure to Address Environmental Uncertainty. Borg, Failing Better: Working Through Chronic System/Personal/Treatment Failures in Psychoanalysis. Part III: Failure in the Family. Hyman, Whose Report Card is it Anyway? Helping Parents Move from Empathic Failure to Empathic Attunement . Ludlam, Failure in Couple Relationships—and in Couple Psychotherapy. Mendelsohn, Clutching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory: Failure, Self-Destruction, and the Icarus Myth. Seiden, You Can’t Go Home Again. Part IV:Therapeutic Failure. Simha-Alpern, Dora and the Bathwater: Shame and Psychoanalytic Failure; A Relational Perspective. Hewitt, Thinking Through Therapeutic Failure with a Suicidal Patient. Part V: Professional Failure in the Consulting Room and on the Career Path. Clark,Whatever Happened?.....A Clinical Evaluation of the Relationship between Humpty Dumpty and the Wall. Bergman, Success Through Failure. Sloane, Reflections on the Failure to Become a Training Analyst. O’Leary, The Blame Game: Accounting for the Role of Happenstance in Failure. Part VI: Integrity vs. Despair: Facing Failure in the Final Phase of the Life Cycle. Stern, The Challenge of Obsolescence. White, Flax, Failure of the Body: Perseverance of the Spirit. Langan, Brief Candle. Part VII: Metaphoric Bridges and Creativity. Baranowski, Otto Rank’s Notion of the Neurotic as the Artiste Manqué. McIntosh, Standing Tall: Bodily Metaphors in a Case of Self-defeating Personal Failure. Sapountzis, The Failure to Understand as a Transitional. Part VIII:The Long Shadow of Childhood Relational Trauma. Levene, The Big Hit: How Adult Illness can Recapitulate Childhood Trauma and Fear of Failure. Willock, The Man who Mistook his Daughter for his Ex-wife. Part IX: Reflections and Final Words. Bohm, Failure as a Spur to Growth. Willock, Failure’s Pervasive Presence.

"At long last, failure is receiving its psychoanalytic due. This thoughtful, ground breaking compendium approaches failure, not as a deficit, but as an integral aspect of living, and as a necessary experiential component of human experience. This highly recommended book will influence the way that psychotherapy and its expectations are perceived and practiced." - Edgar A. Levenson, M.D., Training & Supervising Analyst, W.A. White Institute, 2006 recipient of the Mary S. Sigourney Award for distinguished contributions to the field of psychoanalysis..