The Internal Triangle

A consideration of the role of drives and fantasy in female development in light of the advances in the sciences and psychoanalytic thought, The Internal Triangle makes coherent the disparate knowledge being advanced, in language unencumbered by jargon and obtuseness. Holmes's book will stir both the clinician and the lay person to reconsider their ideas of what is female. -- Ronald Okuaki Lieber, co-editor, Modern Psychoanalysis
Lucy Holmes has made a groundbreaking contribution to the psychoanalytic literature about women. The Internal Triangle illuminates the process of how intelligent hypotheses are developed by listening with an intuitive ear to what our patients actually say to us. Holmes' work with women in groups demonstrates the use of immediacy and progressive emotional communication so crucial to a well-functioning group. The case studies read like short stories; the women she works with come alive on the page.this is a book that will appeal not only to mental health practitioners who want to understand how to work with their female patients, but also to anyone who has ever wanted a thoughtful answer to Freud's question, What do women want?> -- Louis R. Ormont, Ph.D., faculty, Postgraduate Psychotherapy Center, Adelphi University; author, The Group Therapy Experience
Dr. Holmes has provided an innovative and useful theory of female development and psychology from an integrated feminist and Freudian perspective. Using the concept of penis envy as a starting point, she examines recent feminist psychoanalytic theories and research to demonstrate how little girls traverse roads to healthy femininity. Throughout the book, Holmes weaves in rich and vivid clinical material to illustrate her hypotheses. She introduces women of all ages who, with humor and eloquence, articulate their deepest experiences. The Internal Triangle is the most important work about women written by a psychoanalyst with a drive orientation since Helene Deutsch's Psychology of Women. This synthesizing and unique work deserves the careful attention of all psychoanalytically advised cliniclans as well as students of female psychology. -- Robert J. Marshall, Ph.D., A.B.P.P., supervisor and training analyst, Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies; co-author with Simon Marshall of The Transference-Cou
Lucy Holmes has written an insigntful book which puts a "face," through her group-work experience, on the psychological dynamics of women's development throughout their lifespan. She has been especially creative and articulate about the effects of childbearing, which, when guided with insight and compassion on the part of the attendant, can have a critical and positive effect on women's parenting role as well as that of the family constellation. Therapists working with pregnant women will benefit enormously from her words. -- Ruth Watson Lubic, CNM, Ed.D., founder and chair emerita, Family Health and Birth Center; founder and president emerita, Developing Families Center; recipient,
Lucy Holmes has made a groundbreaking contribution to the psychoanalytic literature about women. The Internal Triangle illuminates the process of how intelligent hypotheses are developed by listening with an intuitive ear to what our patients actually say to us. Holmes' work with women in groups demonstrates the use of immediacy and progressive emotional communication so crucial to a well-functioning group. The case studies read like short stories; the women she works with come alive on the page. this is a book that will appeal not only to mental health practitioners who want to understand how to work with their female patients, but also to anyone who has ever wanted a thoughtful answer to Freud's question, What do women want? -- Louis R. Ormont, Ph.D., faculty, Postgraduate Psychotherapy Center, Adelphi University; author, The Group Therapy Experience