Book Description
I believe that there is in all of us a balance to destroy and protect, but in some of us the balance is tilted too much in one direction"". So says Dr. Otto Weininger at the beginning of his work. No problem is more important for our age. What enables a life to be predominantly constructive rather than destructive for self and world? What can psychoanalysis do to tip the balance for the better?
Dr. Weininger cuts through jargon to give many clear and useful portrayals of work with destructive tendencies in a variety of contexts. He has much to say about adults who seem to stall or live life in reverse. There are many individuals who feel numb or dead and undo whatever they try to build. Dr. Weininger shares his attempts to contain the pain of unlived or mislived lives and provide psychic nutrients that make constructive aliveness possible.
Dr. Weininger's book is rich in nutrients for the reader, also. Not only does he have helpful things to say about destructive process in adults, but his book contains a wealth of material on work with children. He traces death work to its sources in early feeding and sleeping problems, various somatic difficulties, phenomena like homesickness, and crisis of spirit that disabled and dying children must face.
This book is an eloquent plea for life, for emotional aliveness, for the possibility of living well together.
"Of all Melanie Klein's contributions, her emphasis on the importance of the daeth instinct in infantile mental life continues to be the most enigmatic and controversial. Professor Weininger's work goes a long way in lessening that enigma and controversy by giving clinical credibility to her concept. Klein who was accused of ignoring external reality. Weininger, in the contrary, contextualizes the effects of the death instinct well within the clinical immediacy of detailed case material. Hes has done a superb job in reconciling a difficult concept with practical clinical issues. This work represents a significant update of the Kleinian genre." - James S. Grotstein
