Bøker av Vamik D. Volkan

The first rigorous psychoanalytic investigation into the heart and mind of Nixon explores the forces and events that shaped his complex personality, presenting an enlightening portrait of a troubled man whose insecurities doomed him to suffer the most sensational downfall in American political history.

This book concerns itself with the third element of the psychological impact of massive human trauma: transgenerational transmission of psychological tasks.

In this comprehensive guide to the mourning process, Dr Volkan, a world-recognised authority on grief, shows how each mourning is as individualised as our fingerprints, encoded with our past history of losses. Anecdotal and compassionate, this is a profoundly moving and informative study of how grief and loss shape all our lives.

This book relates the psychoanalytic journey of a man in his thirties, a grandson of a high-level SS officer, whose case illustrates how individuals can sometimes suffer greatly or cause the suffering of other innocent persons, simply because they are descendants of perpetrators.

The author has three goals in writing this book. The first is to explore large-group identity such as ethnic identity, diplomacy, political propaganda, terrorism and the role of leaders in international affairs. The second goal is to describe societal and political responses to trauma at the hands of the Other, large-group mourning.

The author provides clinical illustrations of primitive transference and counter transference manifestations. He defines "satellite states" in which an individual finds a balance between experiencing individuation and remaining dependent on the Other and "crucial juncture" experiences.

Searching for the Perfect Woman is a thorough account of a five-year psychoanalysis with a deeply troubled, yet successful man-the attention to technique and theory, accompanied by an in-depth interview with Vamik Volkan, makes this an excellent resource for teaching psychoanalytic technique. Beyond the technical merits, the narrative structure and style reads like a novel, drawing lay readers into the fascinating story of Hamilton's life and his eventual cure.

A timely and urgently needed exploration of ethnic violence through a psychoanalytic lens, examining how personal identity interwines with nationality to create hatred of others.