Psychoanalysis and the Nuclear Threat

Attempting to identify and explain the ways in which the threat of world destruction affects psychological development, this volume brings together the work of contributors such as Vamik Volkan, Hanna Segal, John Mack, W.W. Meissner, Henri Parens, Sanfor

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The analytic literature has heretofore been silent about the issues inherent in the nuclear threat. As a groundbreaking exploration of new psychological terrain, Psychoanalysis and the Nuclear Threat will function as a source book for what, it is hoped, will be the continuing effort of analysts and other mental health professionals to explore and engage in-depth nuclear issues.

This volume provides panoramic coverage of the dynamic and clinical considerations that follow from life in the nuclear age. Of special interest are chapters deling with the developmental consequences of the nuclear threat in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and those exploring the technical issues raised by the occurrence in analytic and psychotherapeutic hours of material related to the nuclear threat. Additional chapters bring a psychoanalytic perspective to bear on such issues as the need to have enemies; silence as the "real crime"; love, work, and survival in the nuclear age; the relationship of the nuclear threat to issues of "mourning and melancholia"; apocalyptic fantasies; the paranoid process; considerations of the possible impact of gender on the nuclear threat; and the application of psychoanalytic thinking to nuclear arms strategy. Finally, the volume includes the first case report in the English language - albeit a brief psychotherapy - involving the treatment of a Hiroshima survivor.

A noteworthy event in psychoanalytic publishing, Psychoanalysis and the Nuclear Threat betokens analytic engagement with the most pressing political and moral issue of our time, a cultivating of Freud's "soft voice of the intellect" in an area where it is desperately needed.