The Geography of Meanings: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Place, Space, Land, and Dislocation

by Salman Akhtar

Overview

This book is a collection of "stories", and just as the Stories of the Dreaming act as a container of experiences for the indigenous people, it attempts to be a container for experiences that had not had enough exposure in psychoanalytic literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781905888030
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/31/2007
Series:	The International Psychoanalytical Association International Psychoanalysis Library
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Salman Akhtar was born in India and completed his medical and psychiatric education there. Upon arriving in the USA in 1973, he repeated his psychiatric training at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, and then obtained psychoanalytic training from the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute. Currently, he is Professor of Psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College and a training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. He has authored, edited or co-edited more than 300 publications including books on psychiatry and psychoanalysis and several collections of poetry. He is also a Scholar-in-Residence at the InterAct Theatre Company in Philadelphia. Salman Akhtar received the Sigourney Award in 2012.

Paul Williams is a Training and Supervising Analyst of the British Psychoanalytic Society, a Member of the Royal Anthropological Institute and a Consultant Psychotherapist in the British National Health Service in Belfast. From 2001 to 2007 he was Joint Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. He is a Professor at Queens University Belfast and Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis at Anglia Ruskin University. He has written widely on the subject of personality disorders and psychosis.

Table of Contents

Foreword — Prologue — Introduction — Space — Human space, psychic space, analytic space, geopolitical space — Place, time, and land — Unsettling the settler: history, culture, race, and the Australian self — The Australian patient: traumatic pasts and the work of history — Lost children — Coming to terms with the country: some incidents on first meeting Aboriginal locations and Aboriginal thoughts — Creating mental space: assimilating recovered Maori self-representations — Dislocation — The trauma of geographical dislocation: leaving, arriving, mourning, and becoming — The clinical discovery of time and place — Epilogue

Editorial Reviews

"This book is a multifaceted attempt to understand the psychological mysteries of land, space, native cultures, changing eras, and geographical dislocation. It shows us that many remote and seemingly peaceful areas of the world have their own dark and silent pasts in which their original inhabitants were often brutally decimated and those who remained were not allowed to voice their emotional and cultural legacy. Weaving history, geography, myth, philosophy, and psychoanalysis together, this book tries to understand why such atrocities were committed, how those subjected to these 'crimes' might have perceived them, and what the long-term, transgenerational consequences of these historical events are. The value of this book, however, transcends meaningfully looking at the past. It reminds us that we are all increasingly faced with the 'Other'. By taking a reflective stance, The Geography of Meanings helps the reader to overcome apparently unbridgeable conflicts and to respond with empathy, curiosity, and awe to the many differences and similarities within the human race and its experience in this world!"

Alessandra Piontelli

"This book is a multifaceted attempt to understand the psychological mysteries of land, space, native cultures, changing eras, and geographical dislocation. It shows us that many remote and seemingly peaceful areas of the world have their own dark and silent pasts in which their original inhabitants were often brutally decimated and those who remained were not allowed to voice their emotional and cultural legacy. Weaving history, geography, myth, philosophy, and psychoanalysis together, this book tries to understand why such atrocities were committed, how those subjected to these 'crimes' might have perceived them, and what the long-term, transgenerational consequences of these historical events are. The value of this book, however, transcends meaningfully looking at the past. It reminds us that we are all increasingly faced with the 'Other'. By taking a reflective stance, The Geography of Meanings helps the reader to overcome apparently unbridgeable conflicts and to respond with empathy, curiosity, and awe to the many differences and similarities within the human race and its experience in this world!"

From the Publisher