Bad Feelings

A highly successful synthesis and integration of Freudian, ego-psychological, and neo-Kleinian theory, each of which Schafer has mastered as an expert in his long career Psychologist-Psychoanalyst Everyone experiences bad feelings. Yet, despite the fact that such emotions are a common occurrence, these painful feelings are often labeled as wrong, a moralistic determination that can complicate existing problems in the individual's emotional life. These negative feelings and the defense mechanisms that are employed in response to them are the subjects of this thoughtful study. The author emphasizes the extremes of shame humiliation, mortification, disappointment, envy, abandonment, rejection, mournful loss, and more. Schafer's engaging clinical presentations illustrate the complex process of enabling the individual to mature when such a step has been anxiously avoided for years. This book has implications for the study of bad feelings on a broad scale, including a heightened understanding of the defense mechanisms we employ to guard against them. These defenses may be structured into pathological organizations designed to block feelings and impair emotional development. In such cases, the individual may act on the firm belief that sooner or later, any feelings, even good ones, will bring on suffering. Schafer demonstrates how both the clinician and the patient can work past these blocks. Through careful research and assessment of psychoanalytical methods, this book offers a new understanding of how relief from painful emotional states can be found through the talking cure.