Destructiveness, Intersubjectivity and Trauma

'Bohleber's thoroughly theoretically grounded psychoanalytic approach gives one hope for the future of the discipline. The book is highly intelligent, makes psychoanalysis relevant to some of the deepest intellectual quandaries of our generation including the nature of the bipersonal field, the impact of interpersonal violence on human development, the ideologies that permit and possibly fuel such violence and the cultural forces that are unconsciously at work making all of us potential perpetrators as well as victims. Bohleber's book is a gem. It is the product of one of the most creative psychoanalytic minds of our generation. It purposefully avoids the extreme, is rooted in a balanced portrayal that eschews rhetoric or other attempts at short-circuiting serious balanced enquiry. It stands as a testament to the values within psychoanalysis that it celebrates, to resist idealisation and the destructiveness which it skirts.'- Peter Fonagy PhD FBA, Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis, Head of the Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, Chief Executive, The Anna Freud Centre, London