The Promise

Dr Leonard Shengold is a training analyst and former Director of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Education (affiliated with NYU School of Medicine, where he is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry). He has published eight books including 'Soul Murder' (1989), 'Haunted by Parents' (2006), and over seventy-five papers on clinical, theoretical and applied psychoanalytic topics. He graduated from Columbia College and Downstate New York Medical School, was an officer in both the American and the International Psychoanalytic Associations, and is currently in private practice as a psychiatrist in New York City.

ABOUT THE AUTHORPREFACEINTRODUCTIONPART I: CLINICAL AND LITERARY STUDIES CHAPTER ONE Promise, change, and trauma CHAPTER TWO On the trauma of seeing mother's genitals CHAPTER THREE Chronic trauma and soul murder: literary and clinical examples CHAPTER FOUR Haunting and parricide CHAPTER FIVE Virginia Woolf haunted CHAPTER SIX Rage as a fact of life (or, Who is in Charge of Time and Space?) CHAPTER SEVEN Killing (or not killing) the king CHAPTER EIGHT Vladimir Nabokov: murderous impulses displaced onto Freud and literary rivals-and sublimated in relation to butterflies and chessPART II: YEARLY REPETITIONS EVOKING THE BOOK'S TITLE CHAPTER NINE The psychological effect of birthdays and anniversaries CHAPTER TEN Jewish holidays: Chanukah, Purim, Passover, Rosh Hashana, and Yom Kippur CHAPTER ELEVEN Christian holidays: Christmas, New Year's Day, Lent, and Easter CHAPTER TWELVE Secular holidays: Thanksgiving, St. Valentine's Day, Memorial Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, and the Fourth of July CHAPTER THIRTEEN Holiday from psychoanalysis: as August approachesPART III: THE PROMISE OF EVERYTHING CHAPTER FOURTEEN Being both sexes-addendum: a clinical observation on anal sexuality CHAPTER FIFTEEN Stella-the infant as the centre of the universeREFERENCESINDEX