Addiction, Accommodation, and Vulnerability in Psychoanalysis: Circles without a Center

This  book explores the compulsions and trauma that underlie addiction, using  an intersubjective approach in seeking to understand the inspirations  and challenges arising from the psychoanalytic treatment of addiction,  compulsivity, and related dissociative conditions.

Drawing  on insights from his own analytic practice and personal experience, in  addition to the work of Stolorow, Brandchaft and Winnicott, among  others, Haber considers the complex ways in which addiction becomes  woven into a person’s life, and analyses how it interacts with other  problems such as depression and anxiety, self-fragmentation, and  ambivalence about treatment. Haber creatively integrates the work of  Camus, Kafka, and Beckett to further contemplate the dilemmas that can  arise during the clinical process and, in identifying his own and his  patients’ vulnerabilities and contradictions, provides an honest,  humorous and sometimes painful account of what happens in the consulting  room. 

With its use of rich clinical material and an  accessible and vivid writing style, this book will appeal to all  psychoanalysts and psychotherapists working with patients affected by  addiction, as well as other professionals seeking new insights into  effective strategies for treating this most challenging malady.