Léon Wurmser, M.D., is clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of West Virginia and training and supervising analyst at the New York Freudian Society. Former professor of psychiatry and director of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program at the University of Maryland, he has also taught extensively throughout Europe. Dr. Wurmser trained as a psychiatrist in his native Switzerland and received his psychoanalytic training in this country. Author of 300 articles and coeditor of the six-volume textbook Psychiatric Foundations in Medicine, he has written several books such as The Hidden Dimension and The Mask of Shame. Dr. Wurmser is a recipient of the 1997 Margrit Egner Foundation Award in recognition of outstanding work in anthropologic psychology and philosophy. He maintains a private practice in psychotherapy in Towson, Maryland.
Wurmser's erudition, theoretical knowledge, and clinical wisdom
flow in his writing like an untappable Niagara. His resolve to
conceptualize gives his latest book a new and welcome balance
between conflict, trauma, and affect, productively borrowed from
infant studies. The author is a humanist who brings fully to life
the frequent inhumanity of the inner judge. Best of all, he has a
unique way of conveying the chaos characteristic of the severe
neuroses while making the dynamics understandable to the
reader.
*Joseph Lichtenberg, M.D., editor-in-chief, Pyschoanalytic Inquiry;
presdent, International Council of Psychoanalytic Self
Psychology*
In this important new book, Wurmser's brilliant discussion of the
severe neuroses—too often glibly branded as borderline
disorders—takes into account new appreciation of severe childhood
trauma and its effects, while preserving a nuanced understanding of
conflict and of the flexibly applied but disciplined analytic
method for the treatment of severe neurotic suffering. His
comprehension of the centrality of conflict analysis and of
superego conflicts in particular combines with his insights into
the intricate interrelationship of shame, guilt, anxiety,
masochism, and aggression to make this work a tour de force.
*Melvin R. Lansky, M.D., UCLA Medical School; director of
education, Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute*
In this book, Léon Wurmser shares with us his profound capacity to
work with the severe neuroses, resisting the ambiguities of the
diagnostic label borderline. He demonstrates his respect for and
recognition of the ego's versatile uses of pathology in the service
of defense against early trauma. He sensitively and with consummate
skill demonstrates being 'with' the patient, while avoiding the
degree of interpersonal, therapeutically dependent atmosphere that
in wide-scope treatments often undermines much of the potential for
structural growth. His profound knowledge of the ways in which a
patient's superego takes up arms against the process of growth
brings about therapeutic changes that often have been neglected in
work with the severe neuroses. We can be grateful that Dr. Wurmser
has made his work available in such generous theoretical and
clinical detail.
*Paul Gray, M.D., training and supervising analyst emeritus,
Baltimore/Washington Institute for Psychoanalysis*
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