In this book, Joyce McDougall presents a bold and exciting recasting of the psychoanalytic approach to the fascinating question of the relationship between the mind and the body.[...]

Using the theatre as a central metaphor, this text provides a flexible framework to explore the psychic realities of the characters within us. Case studies underscore how different kinds of patients construct particular fantasies as a response to the pain of earlier life scenarios.[...]

'Human sexuality is inherently traumatic.' Thus begins this fascinating study by one of the world's most distinguished writers in this field. Joyce McDougall convincingly demonstrates that the psychic conflicts arising from the tensions between the inner world of primitive instinctual drives and the[...]