The Dead Mother (The New Library of Psychoanalysis)

To make a research

She's not there.

Conceptually interesting. Clinically relevant.

A significant book for anyone who had a depressed mother and womders why their life is the way it is.

Have you ever had the feeling that somehere in your home you still had an an unfinished cup of coffee ? It is present as an absence. I used to get that feeling so often after certain patients had left. They were not psychotic. Still, I could not shake off that same unfinished coffee somewhere .Perplexing when you have just seen a verbal and pleasant and sometimes very highly functioning patient.The Dead Mother is so often behind those veils, and mirrors, and somehow empty cheer.Thanks to this book, I no longer just FEEL the dead emptiness behind this silent fault in the earth around a patiently waiting human being. Like an experienced geologist "feels" the basic fault in the rock, I now considerthe presence of this absence in a life.I never knew what I was still trying to make up for in a seemingly "healed" and now functioning patient who is always there, like those last drops in that lost cup.This was one of the most important and one of the most useful books I have read for my work. All clinicians should read this because I do not believe there are many who recognise the possibility of a sometime dead mother who is still alive, or a dead idealised mother who was perhaps dead when she was "alive". Or perhaps they do, but like me, it didn't click in. This is going to be endlessly fascinating for work. How I wish everyone could read it before they complacently close a file.

Whilst this title is primarily aimed at counsellors and therapists, it really ought to be read by anyone with an interest in how we relate to one another in the world. Green's original paper is one of the most important piece of psychoanalytic writing of the last 50 years and a stellar cast of commentators here add their views and opinions in constantly invigorating and challenging ways. The only criticism is that it misses a trick by not including Green's original essay.

Good and fast service.

Interesting book but overly wordy