Vamik D Volkan – författare

Regional and Ethnic Conflicts: Perspectives from the Front Lines provides an alternative vantage point that contributes new perspectives to the study of ethnopolitical conflict. The interest and insights students gain from this book into how complex ethnopolitical conflicts can be mitigated, resolved and prevented give hope to the future. From a pedagogical perspective, this text is designed to expose students to alternative perspectives. It adds realism and insight to students' understanding of distal ethnopolitical conflicts. Contributors were purposely asked to discuss a range of factors to bring to light the complexity of ethnopolitical conflict. Their chapters are meant to prod students to internalize the importance of analyzing and understanding ethnopolitical conflicts from multiple perspectives.

A psychoanalytic process from its beginning to its termination is described to illustrate crucial technical issues in the treatment of individuals with narcissistic personality organization and the countertransference manifestations such patients stimulate in the analyst. The subject of this book exhibited cruelty to confirm and stabilize his grandiosity. His internal world was a "reservoir" of the deposited image of his father figure, an individual most severely traumatized during World War II. The patient was given the task to be a mass-"killer" of animals instead of being a hunted one.This book most clearly illustrates how the transgenerational transmission of trauma takes place and how the impact of war continues in future generations. The book also provides an understanding of a special kind of psychological motivation that directs a person to use weapons for mass killing. In this era of pluralism in psychoanalysis, providing the story of a psychoanalytic case in its duration opens ways for comparison and discussion of technique and can be used as a teaching tool.

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, and the appearance of the history of ancestors and its consequences. The third goal is to expand theories of large-group psychology in its own right and define concepts illustrating what happens when tens of thousands or millions of people share similar psychological journeys. The author is a psychoanalyst who has been involved in unofficial diplomacy for thirty-five years. His interdisciplinary team has brought "enemy" representatives, such as Israelis and Arabs, Russians and Estonians, Georgians and South Ossetians, together for dialogue. He has spent time in refugee camps and met many world leaders.

This book examines adults' identifications and internal relationships with their siblings' mental representations. The authors believe that the best way to illustrate clinical formulations and psychoanalytic theoretical concepts is to provide detailed clinical data. The influence of childhood sibling experiences and associated unconscious fantasies, in their own right, in adults' personality characteristics, behaviour patterns, and symptoms are presented from seventeen case reports. Clinicians who have patients with fear of pregnancy, claustrophobia, incestuous fantasies, extreme dependency on or murderous rage against siblings, guilt due to the death of a sister or brother in childhood, replacement child syndrome, history of adoption, certain types of animal phobias and related issues will find this volume most helpful. The authors have made a rare, but needed, psychoanalytic contribution that examines mental representations of sisters and brothers in our daily 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. In it, technical considerations in treating such an individual, including countertransference issues and concepts related to transgenerational transmissions-for example, identification, depositing, dissociation, encapsulation, and remembering through actions-are explored. The man had a repeating daydream of carrying a big egg under his arm. The imagined egg, representing his encapsulated dissociated state, contained the mental representation of his Nazi grandfather and his grandfather's victims, along with images of most tragic historical events. He attempted to turn his grandfather's image from a life-taker to a life-giver and wished to own the older man's grandiose specialness, while fearing the loss of his own life. These opposite aims created unnamed "catastrophes".

How we cope with grief and come to terms with the death of a loved one shapes our world. 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.

Aside from the many political, cultural and economic aspects of the present refugee crisis in Europe, it is also crucial to consider the psychological element. In our fast-changing world, globalisation, advances in communication technology, fast travel, terrorism and now the refugee crisis make psychoanalytic investigation of the Other a major necessity. Psychoanalyst Vamik Volkan, who left Cyprus for the US as a young man, brings his own experiences as an immigrant to bear on this study of the psychology of immigrants and refugees, and of those who cross paths with them. In Part 1, case examples illustrate the impact of traumatic experiences, group identity issues, and how traumas embedded in the experience of immigrants and refugees can be passed down from one generation to the next. Part 2 focuses on the host countries, considering the evolution of prejudice and how fear of newcomers can affect everything from international politics to the way we behave as individuals.

This book traces the historical and cross-cultural aspects of the psychic bond between man and animals, and elucidates the role of animals in the normal development of the human mind. It discusses the phenomenology and dynamics of the appearance of animals in human dreams.

This book offers a detailed and thorough perspective on the psychological meanings of animals to human beings and on their role in the development of the human mind and its psychopathology. It presents a multitude of new observations on human interactions with animals.

More and more individuals with ego defects, severe object relations conflicts, affective turbulence, and unassimilated contradictions are seeking help from psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. Contributors to this book explore hereditary and constitutional factors, environmental influences and unconscious fantasies in the development of the psychot

The author believes that studying a therapeutic process closely from its beginning to its termination is one of the best ways to observe, learn, and teach psychoanalytic concepts. This book is unusual since it describes a man's drastic internal psychological changes over forty years. He was thirty-nine years old when he wanted to cut off his wif

The Third Reich in the Unconscious: TransgenerationalTransmission and Its Consequences examines the effects of the Holocaust on second-generation survivors and specifically describes how historical images and trauma are transferred. The authors reveal the many ways in which the psychological legacy of the Nazi regime manifests itself in subsequent generations and how psychopathology, if present, can assume a number of different forms. Among the detailed case histories and treatment considerations, the text provides insight for developing strategies that will tame and eventually prevent transgenerational transmission.

This is not your typical psychotherapy case; it is the story of one man's inner struggle to find peace and happiness in an internal world filled with dangerous father figures and tempting but rejecting femme fatales. Training analyst, author, and four-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Vamik Volkan weaves a compelling story of Hamilton's complete psychoanalysis. From one angle, it is an evocative, accessible page-turner, drawing readers from the professional world and the lay public into the inner life of a compulsive womanizer, and the psychoanalytic treatment that brought about massive change in his inner life and personal relationships. From another angle, it is about the profound influence of historical traumas transmitted across generations and how not only an individual's parents' personal trauma, but also ancestors' historical traumas, reverberate in the current generation. Our ancestors' suffering during wars, for example, does not disappear when our ancestors die or when wars end, but continues to influence their offspring. For the deeply inquisitive person and serious students of psychoanalysis, this is an opportunity to learn about psychoanalytic theory and technique applied to a single case.The book confronts the question "Does psychoanalysis help?" Through this detailed account of the psychoanalytic treatment processes, the reader witnesses the slow but compelling changes in Hamilton's internal world. Interspersed throughout the manuscript, J. Christopher Fowler, an experienced therapist, clinical researcher, and educator, challenges Volkan to explain how his psychoanalytic techniques affect changes in Hamilton's mind.

In the wake of recent conflicts in Russia and the former Yugoslavia, ethnic terrorism and ethnic cleansing have become household words. Yet we are at a loss to find solutions to such struggles. In Bloodlines , Vamik Volkan, a world-renowned psychiatrist specializing in international relations, explores ethnic violence by examining history and diplomacy through a psycho-analytic lens.Dr. Volkan leads the reader on investigative tours of battlegrounds in the Middle East, Russia, Turkey, Cyprus, the Baltics, and the Balkans. In Serbia, he discovers that the Battle of Kosovo, fought in 1389, is the rallying cry for modern nationalists, who view the past as prophecy. In Turkey, PKK terrorist leader Apo reveals that he still considers himself an unloved child and orders his army of Kurdish women to remain virgins because of his own disgust with unclean" adult behaviour. In Latvia, after the dissolution of the USSR, Dr. Volkan learns that ethnic Latvians plan to disinter corpses and segregate cemeteries in an attempt to establish a national identity separate from that of Russia. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, Dr. Volkan analyzes these issues of identity formation, perceived versus real threats, the persistence of past traumas, and the desire for revenge.The result is a work that lays the foundation for understanding the differences between ethnic groups as well as the common ground they share. Timely, brilliant, and gripping, Bloodlines gives fascinating insights into how personal identity intertwines with nationality, and why hatred of others becomes a part of our sense of self.

Regional and Ethnic Conflicts: Perspectives from the Front Lines provides an alternative vantage point that contributes new perspectives to the study of ethnopolitical conflict. The interest and insights students gain from this book into how complex ethnopolitical conflicts can be mitigated, resolved and prevented give hope to the future. From a pedagogical perspective, this text is designed to expose students to alternative perspectives. It adds realism and insight to students' understanding of distal ethnopolitical conflicts. Contributors were purposely asked to discuss a range of factors to bring to light the complexity of ethnopolitical conflict. Their chapters are meant to prod students to internalize the importance of analyzing and understanding ethnopolitical conflicts from multiple perspectives.

This comprehensive work updates the psychodynamic and physiological understanding and treatment of mourning, depression and the depressive character. It covers depression in relation to situational and life events to show how depressed states unfold and are resolved in psychodynamic therapy.

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Describes an approach to understanding and treating patients usually described as borderline or psychotic. The book focuses on these patients' fragile psychic cores, which have become saturated by unnameable bad effects that have been channelled through early experiences with the mother.

The Third Reich in the Unconscious: TransgenerationalTransmission and Its Consequences examines the effects of the Holocaust on second-generation survivors and specifically describes how historical images and trauma are transferred. The authors reveal the many ways in which the psychological legacy of the Nazi regime manifests itself in subsequent generations and how psychopathology, if present, can assume a number of different forms. Among the detailed case histories and treatment considerations, the text provides insight for developing strategies that will tame and eventually prevent transgenerational transmission.

A psychoanalytic process from its beginning to its termination is described to illustrate crucial technical issues in the treatment of individuals with narcissistic personality organization and the countertransference manifestations such patients stimulate in the analyst. The subject of this book exhibited cruelty to confirm and stabilize his grandiosity. His internal world was a "reservoir" of the deposited image of his father figure, an individual most severely traumatized during World War II. The patient was given the task to be a mass-"killer" of animals instead of being a hunted one.This book most clearly illustrates how the transgenerational transmission of trauma takes place and how the impact of war continues in future generations. The book also provides an understanding of a special kind of psychological motivation that directs a person to use weapons for mass killing. In this era of pluralism in psychoanalysis, providing the story of a psychoanalytic case in its duration opens ways for comparison and discussion of technique and can be used as a teaching tool.

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, and the appearance of the history of ancestors and its consequences.The third goal is to expand theories of large-group psychology in its own right and define concepts illustrating what happens when tens of thousands or millions of people share similar psychological journeys. Vamik D. Volkan is a psychoanalyst who has been involved in unofficial diplomacy for thirty-five years. His interdisciplinary team has brought "enemy" representatives, such as Israelis and Arabs, Russians and Estonians, Georgians and South Ossetians, together for dialogue. He has spent time in refugee camps and met many world leaders. In 2008 he initiated the International Dialogue Initiative (IDI), and is one of the IDI leaders who brings together unofficial representatives, including psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic group therapists and former diplomats, from Lebanon, Germany, Iran, Israel, Russia, Turkey, UK, and USA to discuss world affairs from different points of view and evaluate psychological issues that contaminate them. As far-reaching developments in communication technology and modern globalization are occurring and changing human civilization, the authors work finds a crucial place for psychodynamic thinking in world affairs.

This book examines adults' identifications and internal relationships with their siblings' mental representations. The authors believe that the best way to illustrate clinical formulations and psychoanalytic theoretical concepts is to provide detailed clinical data. The influence of childhood sibling experiences and associated unconscious fantasies, in their own right, in adults' personality characteristics, behaviour patterns, and symptoms are presented from seventeen case reports. Clinicians who have patients with fear of pregnancy, claustrophobia, incestuous fantasies, extreme dependency on or murderous rage against siblings, guilt due to the death of a sister or brother in childhood, replacement child syndrome, history of adoption, certain types of animal phobias and related issues will find this volume most helpful. The authors have made a rare, but needed, psychoanalytic contribution that examines mental representations of sisters and brothers in our daily lives.

'This book is a major contribution to culture and to the psychoanalytic literature. The authors explore how animals, both wild and domesticated, have powerful symbolic meanings in our psyches, mythology, religion, literature, art, music, and popular culture. From the prehistoric art of Lascaux to Picasso, from The Fly to the American eagle, the psychoanalytic perceptions are subtle and suggestive, the aesthetic, film, and national insights are a delight.'-Peter Loewenberg, Dean, Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute, Professor of History and Political Psychology, UCLA'Our cousins - the animals - swarm, creep, fly, swim, and crawl all about us, even sharing our houses and infesting our bodies. We hunt them, breed, them, clothe ourselves with them, and eat them for dinner (as they sometimes do to us). They populate our literature, myths, religions, arts, our language and its metaphors, and they haunt our unconscious fantasies and our dreams. The profoundest, fiercest, and most intimate urges and feelings within us are our animal passions and instincts. The parade of animals that accompany us through this life is held up for review and appreciation in these delightful essays, all of which share a dedication to the understanding of human life and culture through the lens of psychoanalytic theory in its manifold diversity.'- Robert A. Paul, PhD, Candler Professor of Anthropology and Dean, Emory College

'Salman Akhtar and Vamik Volkan's dynamic book, Mental Zoo, takes the reader on a panoramic tour illuminating the rich world of animals in human experience. Here Freud's rats, wolves, and horses join our own cats and dogs to meet snakes, spiders, birds, and cockroaches. With an engaging blend of whimsy and erudition, the contributors describe the feelings, fantasies, dreams, nightmares, and delusions that animals evoke in us all. Detailed clinical examples capture the richness of the intrapsychic and interpersonal places that animals inhabit in our psyches. The book encompasses the role of animals not only in normal development and psychopathology, but also in history and mythology. Mental health professionals will listen to their patients with new sensitivities after Mental Zoo introduces them to this fascinating menagerie.'- Alex Hoffer, MD, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Training and Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Institute of New England'This book, a psychoanalytic study of the role played by animals in the human mind, is a huge contribution to the understanding of a segment of mental life never before studied in such depth and focus. The results are spectacular. The subject matter, besides being immensely informative, is riveting. From the very dedication, in which the two editors remember their respective family's menagerie, including, a cat, dog, horse, cow, donkey, python, and pet tiger, it is apparent how much each author approaches his subject with reverence, awe, and love. This book, besides deepening the psychoanalytic situation, extends applied analysis to another level, from the inanimate to man's next of kin.The spectrum of animals studied, from rats to horses, dogs, cats and wolves, to birds, snakes, spiders and insects, is dazzling, provocative, and always thought-provoking. It is psychoanalytic, with each animal viewed from philia to phobia, from unconscious to conscious effects, thorough at every level. Each contribution resounds with its relevance to clinical work and to everyday observations. The scholarship is historical, prehistorical, even paleontological, and ranges over myths, religious worship, rituals, language, folklore, symbols, art, and always clinical data, from Freud's to our own with a special bounty to dreams and nightmares. Several of the chapters will be classics. The book as a whole is more than a compendium; it is an encyclopedia.'- Leo Rangell, MD, (1913-2011) psychoanalyst and clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California

The author believes that studying a therapeutic process closely from its beginning to its termination is one of the best ways to observe, learn, and teach psychoanalytic concepts. This book is unusual since it describes a man's drastic internal psychological changes over forty years. He was thirty-nine years old when he wanted to cut off his wife's head with an axe and he was hospitalized; previous to this incident he had delusions and hallucinations. He died at age eighty-two as a beloved community leader. The author provides clinical illustrations of primitive transference and countertransference 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 that are necessary to learn how to integrate self and object images and move up the developmental steps. Various concepts such as the replacement child, actualized unconscious phantasy, emotional flooding, and linking interpretation and therapeutic play are explored.This book also pays attention to cultural and religious differences in the backgrounds of two persons, the patient and the therapist, intimately working together for a long time. Therapeutic concepts described in this book and their clinical illustrations will encourage mental health professionals not to lose sight of the importance of the psychodynamic approach to individuals with psychotic personality organisation.

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. In it, technical considerations in treating such an individual, including countertransference issues and concepts related to transgenerational transmissions-for example, identification, depositing, dissociation, encapsulation, and remembering through actions-are explored. The man had a repeating daydream of carrying a big egg under his arm. The imagined egg, representing his encapsulated dissociated state, contained the mental representation of his Nazi grandfather and his grandfather's victims, along with images of most tragic historical events. He attempted to turn his grandfather's image from a life-taker to a life-giver and wished to own the older man's grandiose specialness, while fearing the loss of his own life. These opposite aims created unnamed "catastrophes". This book describes his psychoanalytic process from beginning to end and how he slowly cracked open his metaphorical egg, facing and naming the "catastrophes," and eventually taming them.