Description
Book SynopsisWinner of the 2010 Sigourney Award!
Psychoanalysts would argue that at the root of anxiety about loneliness, which commonly brings people into analysis, lies anxiety about separation, unresolved since childhood.
When re-experienced in analysis, the painful awareness of solitude - the sense of being a separate person - can become a rich source of personal creativity. In The Taming of Solitude, Jean-Michel Quinodoz brings together the views of Freud, Klein, Hanna Segal, W.R.D. Fairbairn, D.W. Winnicott, Anna Freud, Margaret Mahler, Heinz Kohut, John Bowlby and others, presenting a comprehensive approach to the experience of loneliness, a universal phenomenon which can be observed in everyday life and in any therapeutic situation.
Written with clarity and insight, The Taming of Solitude will be of great interest to all psychoanalysts and therapists.
Trade Review"The Taming of Solitude is well written and a pleasure to read. ... The many paragraph headings allow the reader space to pause and think, and there is a comprehensive bibliography and index. It is an authoritative account of separation anxiety and the ample clinical material gives a glimpse into how Quinodoz works with it. It will certainly be of interest to anyone working with analytical ideas and to interested readers in general." - British Journal of Psychotherapy
"The Taming of Solitude (La Solitude Approivsee) is an important work, not only because it provides a precise presentation of the subject and of the existing views on it ... but also because it shows us a psychoanalyst at work, with his concepts, hopes, difficulties and - in a fascinating parallel to the subject of the book - his creative solitude." - J Manzano, Psychoanalysis in Europe
"The author proposes that we reflect on the precious concept of 'buoyancy' ('portance') which he has created to describe the state of the patient who has sufficiently internalized the capacity of the analyst to carry him so that he is able to start carrying himself on his own ... This is a fundamental condition for the taming of solitude and loneliness so that the analysis can leave not only the analyst but also the analysis, and can transfer the experience he has obtained from analysis to his own life ... This is what this beautiful book teaches us". - Cleopatre Athanassiou, Rev. Franc. Psychoanal
"The Taming of Solitude is well written and a pleasure to read. ... The many paragraph headings allow the reader space to pause and think, and there is a comprehensive bibliography and index. It is an authoritative account of separation anxiety and the ample clinical material gives a glimpse into how Quinodoz works with it. It will certainly be of interest to anyone working with analytical ideas and to interested readers in general." - British Journal of Psychotherapy
"... an excellent resource for psychoanalytic psychotherapy practice. ... comprehensive and thoroughly written book, one that deserves a wide readership."- Reflections, Summer 94
"... an impressive contribution to the development of the psychoanalytic discourse concerning anxieties related to separation and object loss and the transformation of the experience of solitude through the analytic process. ... an important contribution to the development of psychoanalytic theory and technique in this area." - International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol 75, 1994
Reviews of the French edition:"The Taming of Solitude (La Solitude Approivsee) is an important work, not only because it provides a precise presentation of the subject and of the existing views on it ... but also because it shows us a psychoanalyst at work, with his concepts, hopes, difficulties and - in a fascinating parallel to the subject of the book - his creative solitude." - J Manzano, Psychoanalysis in Europe
"The author proposes that we reflect on the precious concept of 'buoyancy' ('portance') which he has created to describe the state of the patient who has sufficiently internalized the capacity of the analyst to carry him so that he is able to start carrying himself on his own ... This is a fundamental condition for the taming of solitude and loneliness so that the analysis can leave not only the analyst but also the analysis, and can transfer the experience he has obtained from analysis to his own life ... This is what this beautiful book teaches us". - Cleopatre Athanassiou, Rev. Franc. Psychoanal
"... The taming of solitude, says Quinodoz, does not mean that anxiety is abolished, but that it is faced so that it can be used in the service of the living..." - Roland Jaccard, Le Monde
Table of ContentsSegal, Foreword. Part One: Separation Anxiety in Psychoanalytic Practice. Separation Anxiety in Transference Phantasies. Separation Anxiety Illustrated by a Clinical Example. Approaches to the Interpretation of Separation Anxiety. Part Two: The Place of Separation Anxiety and Object-loss. Freud, Separation Anxiety and Object-loss. The Views of Melanie Klein and her School on Separation Anxiety and Object-loss. The Place of Separation Anxiety and Object-loss in the Other Main Psychoanalytic Theories. Part Three: Technical Considerations. Transference Interpretations of Separation Anxiety. Physical Pain and Negative Transference. Acting Out and Separation Anxiety. The Psychoanalytic Setting and the Container Function. Part Four: The Taming of Solitude. Termination of the Analysis and Separation Anxiety. The Capacity to be Alone, Buoyancy and the Integration of Physical Life. Recapitulation and Conclusions. Bibliography. Name Index. Subject Index.
