Book reviews sharply on aggression in this treatise on love.
But, by the same token, the acknowledge
ment of the complex ways in which love and
EDITED BY SIDNEY CROWN and ALAN LEE aggression merge and interact in the couple's
life also highlights the mechanism by which
love can integrate and neutralise aggression
and, under many circumstances, triumph
over it―.
These statements do sum up the main
The Cradle of Violence.Essayson GP's surgery, a small child's play, a poet's themes of this book which deals with the
Psychiatry,Psychoanalysisand mind . . . contrary to popular belief, the unconscious fantasies with their roots in
Literature encounter between psychological medicine infantile sexuality which permeate a
and the law is inextricably bound up with couple's relationship. The most central and
the generality of human kind. It is the important theme is the importance of a
By StephenWilson. London:Jessica Kingsley.
underside of our ‘¿ thinveneer of civiisation', couple being able to contain aggression. He
995.250 pp.£14.95
(pb).ISBN:85302306 X with which both psychoanalysts and writers also focuses on the tolerance of ambivalence
(as well as many others) have been in the battle between love and hate in the
There is a pleasing straightforwardness and
concerned, and it surfaces when conflicts couple as well as the relationship of the
elegance to this collection of essays by
come to be publicly adjudicated―(i.e. in the couple to the surrounding group and
Stephen Wilson, written as papers over a
Courts). culture.
period of some 15 years. They have been
shaped, so he tells us in his Preface, by his The tone is necessarily personal, partly It is an extremely wide-ranging book,
daily, professional, clinical and research because of the chosen form. Have we not all spanning from a biological perspective to the
work in a number of doctorly capacities admired, and envied, the apparent freedom socio-cultural, and it is interesting to read
and by the enduring passions of literature with which Montaigne produces in a few both personally and professionally.
and psychoanalysis. pages essays with titles like “¿ On Idleness―, However, as with all Kernberg's writing, it
“¿ On the power of the imagination―,“¿ On is not easy to read as it is so dense and
The form adopted is that of the essay, or
cruelty―,“¿ Onsmells―or “¿ Onbooks―,and technical. It is jargon-filled and tends also to
‘¿ essai'a form of ‘¿ trial',a literary term
so on —¿and always without references? be repetitive. There is a lack of detailed case
invented by Montaigne, in the 1580s, in
Although Wilson provides a range of examples despite a number of case anecdotes.
order to test his own response to different
apposite, and for me quite new, references I do think, though that it is worth battling
subjects and situations; and this is what
he is refreshingly free of any exigent need for through this to reach Kernberg's insight,
Wilson himself does here, inhabiting a world
comprehensiveness or oppressive expertise. particularly about our ubiquitous bisexuality
of multiple identities —¿as psychiatrist,
psychotherapist and literary critic (all and the struggle towards mature sexual love.
within a context of philosophical inquiry) —¿ Christopher Cordess ConsultantForensic His discussion of sexual inhibitions and
yet integrating them not only within the Psychiatrist, Three Bridges Regional Secure psychopathology, particularly perversion, is
collection but mostly within individual Unit, Southall, Middlesex UBI 3EU very interesting, especially in relation to the
essays. He seeks to illuminate, by showing lack of integration of aggression in the
how one particular experience is like another; couple. His writing on triangulations in
what Wittgenstein called “¿ the understanding relation to the couple and others, and the
which consists in seeing connections―,the use group or in society is also convincing. The
of analogy, to make us see what may be an section on masochism and teasing, where he
old chestnut in a new way.
LoveRelations—¿
Normality and describes the interplay between seduction and
Pathology frustration, had a strong resonance. There is
He is at home equally on subject matter
ranging from Multiple Personality Disorder By Otto F.Kernberg. London:Yale University something very important to be understood
(Disassociative Identity Disorder, DSM—lV), Press. 1995.203 pp. £19.95
(pb) in this book, but it is also very “¿ teasingly―
drug addiction, the theraputic community hidden behind an over-use of jargon.
movement and general practice on the one In the preface of this book, Kernberg, a
hand; via the theoretical writings on mdlvi leading American psychoanalyst, describes Ricky Emanuel Consultant,Department
dual and group psychology of Freud, Klein how he was asked after all his work on ofChild and Adolescent Psychiatry, Royal
and Bion; to the deconstruction and analysis borderline and narcissistic patients, why he Free Hospital, Pond Street, London
of texts of George Eliot, Hans Andersen, did not write about love. He said that NW3 2QG
Sylvia Plath and Robert Louis Stevenson, on everybody has the impression that he was
the other. Questions of a forensic nature are only concerned with aggression. He goes on
never far away: they include for example, to say that in his study of couples and the
infanticide, murder, guilt and responsibility nature of love relations “¿ didIt not take me
in George Eliot (Chapter 13), of perversions long to discover that it was just as impossible
of the mind (“crooked― thinking) and of to study the vicissitudes of love without the PsychologicalAspectsof
language —¿the way we talk to ourselves as vicissitudes of aggression in the relationship Depression:Towardsa Cognitive
well as others —¿as the necessary precondi of the couple as in the individual. The
Interpersonal Integration
tion for acts of violence (Chapter 6). Wilson, aggressive aspects of the couple's erotic
in his Preface puts it well: “¿ none
of this could relationship emerged as important in all By Ian H.Gotliband Constance L.Hammen.
be described as mainstream forensic intimate sexual relationships―. Chichester:JohnWiley. 1995.330 pp. £17.99
(pb)
psychotherapy, yet almost every essay He says, with uncharacteristic humour
touches on the subject —¿the murderous “¿ So,
despite the best of intentions, the if a determinedly positivist and research
impulse in a dream, a novelist's work, a incontrovertible evidence forces me to focus oriented view of depression is required, you
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