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This book is a collection of conference papers given at the second International Psychoanalytic Conference to take place in Belfast, and was sponsored by The Royal College of Psychiatrists, The Centre for Psychotherapy, The Belfast Trust, Northern Ireland Association for the Study of Psychoanalysis, The Northern Ireland Institute of Human Relations and the British Psychoanalytic Society.
The papers are printed in full plus the discussions that followed. Together they offer the reader a stimulating read. My one gripe with the book is that it appears incompletely edited. It is reasonable to put the conference within the context of the ash cloud that descended on Britain in 2010 but one reference would surely be enough. Likewise in the discussions that follow the papers, we could have been saved the repetitious introductions, the questions that are not answered, as well as the comments that sail away into the stratosphere as they sometimes do in such sessions.
However, the book offers a welcome collection of papers that link the subjects of aggression and violence and the development of these aspects of the human character. The quality of the papers, delivered by clinicians, means that the papers are relevant to any psychoanalytic psychotherapist in either child or adult practice. They also invite a welcome look at culture, society and politics within a psychoanalytic framework.
The book enables the reader to enter a lively discussion led by the topics of violence and aggression that develop through to theories on terrorism, fundamentalism, early infant deprivation and the effects of abuse in its many forms. We are invited to think about how secure holding, coupled with analytic input, can impact on the perpetrator both positively and negatively, and several papers