Primitive Experiences of Loss

Robert Waska MFT, PhD is a graduate of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies and has a private psychoanalytic practice for individuals and couples in San Francisco and Marin County. Dr. Waska has taught and presented in the Bay Area as well as internationally. He is the author of ten published textbooks on psychoanalytic theory and technique, is a contributing author for both 'The Handbook of Contemporary Psychotherapy' and 'The Handbook of Hate', and has published over eighty articles in professional journals. Dr. Waska's work focuses on various contemporary Kleinian topics including projective identification, loss, borderline and psychotic states, the practical realities of psychoanalytic practice in the modern world, and the establishment of analytic contact with difficult, hard to reach patients. He emphasizes the moment-to-moment understanding of transference and phantasy as the vehicle for gradual integration and mastery of unconscious conflict between self and other.

Taking as his starting point Melanie Klein's concept of the paranoid-schizoid position, and succinctly reviewing subsequent developments within the Kleinian perspective, Robert T. Waska formulates a distinctive and subtle argument concentrated on the topic of primitive loss. It is Waska's conviction that the experience of loss has a primacy within the paranoid-schizoid position but that this has received insufficient and inadequate recognition, with significant implications for analytic technique.With this standpoint as his orienting focus, Waska provides a finely-textured and penetrating discussion of such issues as projective identification, symbolization, transference and counter transference. A thoughtful and perceptive examination of theoretical issues is buttressed with substantial illustrative case material throughout.Calling for further work to be done in refining and clarifying the understanding of loss, and its intrapsychic, interpersonal and technical ramifications, the present volume represents a significant contribution and stimulus to that task

• Preface , Introduction , The Contributions of Projective Identification and Symbolization , Theoretical issues , Greed, self-starvation, and the quest for safety , Idealization, devaluation, and the narcissistic stance , Vulnerability, union, and the return of the bad object , Love, hate, and the dread of impending annihilation , Loss and primitive methods of relating: difficulties in the analytic encounter , Maintenance of hope: the working-through process , Primitive Loss and the Masochistic Defence , Theoretical issues , Working with the concrete thinking of narcissism , Transference and countertransference , Grievance and the paranoid–schizoid experience , Summary and conclusions