Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: Disturbances of the Depressive Position
Chapter One: The As-If Way of Life Versus the As-Is Way of Life: Confusions between Servant, Master, and Self
Chapter Two: Low Frequency Psychoanalytic Engagement with a Depressive Patient: The Beginning Phase of Treatment from a Kleinian Approach
Chapter Three: The Graveyard Sentry, Self-Induced Comas, and Building the Better Beast
Chapter Four: The Dark Side of the Depressive Position: Severe Struggles with Guilt, Persecutory Loss, and Excessive Reliance on Projective Identification
Part Two: Kleinian Work within the Narcissistic Realm
Chapter Five: The Difficulties of Working with Thick-Skinned Narcissists: Envy, Projective Identification, and the Internal Void
Chapter Six: Striving Toward Useful Interpretations with Narcissistic Patients:
Managing Counter-transference Enactments with a Thick-Skinned Narcissist
Chapter Seven: Patients Who Avoid the Threat of Persecutory Mourning by Means
of Entitlement, Devaluation, and a Demand for Action
Chapter Eight: “I Thought I Was Special. If Not, I am Nothing”: The Treatment of Primitive Loss and the Defensive Search for Uniqueness
Chapter Nine: Lack of Traction in the Analytic Process: Adrift in the Counter-transference
Closing
Bibliography

About the Author

Robert Waska, MFT, PhD, is a graduate of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies and has a private psychoanalytic practice for individuals and couples in San Francisco and Marin County. He is the author of ten published textbooks on psychoanalytic theory and technique, is a contributing author for both The Handbook of Contemporary Psychotherapy and The Handbook of Hate, and has published over ninety articles in professional journals. He is also the author of The Modern Kleinian Approach to Psychoanalytic Technique: Clinical Illustrations.