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The Dread of Falling: Reflections on Primitive Mental States

Author(s) : Alina Schellekes

Reviews and Endorsements

This is an inspiring book. Alina Schellekes’s beautifully rendered case histories concern patients whose symptoms range from hypochondriasis to self-destroying perfectionism to sex addiction, from eating disorders to a sense of inauthenticity or a lack of meaning. In these adults with autistic enclaves and defenses, she documents the prime importance of primitive anxieties, of holes, voids or catastrophic absences in the fabric of the personality, even while she warns against becoming fascinated by these lest the patient’s more developed aspects be overlooked. The writing is deeply personal and is enriched by links to literature, theatre and painting, as well as by wide-ranging theoretical scholarship. The book will be indispensable to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychologists and to anyone interested in understanding the human mind, particularly its primitive layers.
Maria Rhode, Professor Emerita of Child Psychotherapy, Tavistock Clinic, London; member of the Association of Child Psychotherapists; child analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society; recipient of The Frances Tustin Memorial Prize, 1998