Description
Book SynopsisEmotions of Menace and Enchantment examines four pivotal human emotions. It explores what defines these emotions, how they interact, and how they impact the experience of self-boundary. All four feelings speak to the boundary around the self, to whether we stiffen that boundary, relax it or worry about its fraying.
Psychoanalysis has looked closely at conflicts that human beings experience, but has paid relatively less attention to the specific emotions through which conflict is known and managed. The disgust emotion is unique in operating like a gatekeeper that manages what approaches us closely. Disgust appears prominently in our relationship with the physical world, but surprisingly, is just as common in the world of politics. It moves people to action, including deeds of great violence. Horror occurs when we feel invaded and altered by something that leads to profound insecurity. Human beings behaving inhumanly is one common source of horror. 
Trade Review
"Susan Beth Miller skillfully portrays emotions as fluid, multifaceted (experiential, physiological, cognitive, conscious, unconscious), sometimes contradictory, and intrinsically relational. Our feelings reflect appraisals of the world and they reconfigure our selves accordingly, prompting us toward receptive engagement or guarded defensiveness. To her research, Miller brings the knowledge and sensitivity of a sophisticated psychoanalytic clinician, supplemented with insights from anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and literature. Her impressive meditation on emotion will stimulate valuable thoughts in readers, intensifying and enriching their interest in, and understanding of, the affective spectra they encounter in themselves, their patients, and others."-Brent Willock, author of Comparative-Integrative Psychoanalysis, is Founding President, Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis.
Table of ContentsChapter 1: Entering the World of Emotion; Chapter 2: The Gatekeeper Emotion: Disgust; Chapter 3: The Breakdown Emotion: Horror; Chapter 4: The Imbibing Emotion: Awe; Chapter 5: The Fixed Eye of Fascination; Concluding Comments
