Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Shadow of the Parent

Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Shadow of the Parent explores the psychological challenges faced by the offspring of either famous or notorious parents. Beginning with parental legacies found in mythology and the Bible, the book presents a series of case studies drawn from a range of narrative contexts, selecting personalities drawn from history, politics, psychoanalysis and literature, all viewed from an analytic perspective. The concluding section focuses on the manifestation of this parental shadow within the field of fine art, as written by artists themselves. This is a lively and varied collection from a fascinating range of contributors. It provides readers with a new understanding of family history, trauma and reckoning screened through a psychoanalytic perspective, and will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, counsellors and anyone interested in the dynamics of the family.

Jonathan Burke is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist working in private practice in the UK. He previously edited The Topic of Cancer: New Perspectives on the Emotional Experience of Cancer (Karnac, 2013).

About the Editor and Contributors. Foreword, Margot Waddell. Preface: A Hard Act to Follow, Jonathan Burke. Introduction, Jonathan Burke. I. Perspectives 1. In the Shadow of Violence: Isaac and Abraham, Stephen Frosh 2. Hard Acts Hard to Follow: Sophocles, Hofmannsthal, Strauss, and Elektra, Christopher Wintle 3. Under the Shadow of Silence: On Speechless Love in King Lear, Steven Groarke 4. "Madness, Yet There's Method in It": The Shadow of the Doctor in Hamlet's Mirror, Paul Heritage II. 'I'-Witness Accounts 5. 'Derealization': In the Shadow of the Son, Faye Carey 6. Her Mother's Footsteps, Marion Bower 7. A Tragic Inheritance: The Irresolvable Conflict for Children of Perpetrators, Coline Covington 8. Making My Way Out of the Shadow Into the Sun: A Painful Confrontation with My Past, Martin Miller 9. Closed Doors, Sylvia Paskin, with Coda by Sara Collins 10. Kafka: 'Parental Superiority' As the Act That Feels Hard to Follow, Steven Mendoza 11. Attachment and Doubt in the Work of Stanley Cavell, Robbie Duschinsky and Serena Messina 12. The Eye Begins to See: Personal Reflections on a Fragmented Father-Son Relationship, and Other Related Matters, Howard Cooper 13. Shadow, Colour, Glass: The Family I Knew and the Family I Never Knew, Ardyn Halter 14. Paddle Your Own Canoe: Negotiating the Shadows, Jane McAdam Freud