Going on Being in Challenging Times

Psychoanalytic Reflections

Michelle Flax, J. Gail White

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English

Routledge
04 August 2025

Psychoanalytical theory (Freudian psychology); Psychotherapy

In this volume, we explore what it is to live through trauma while experiencing huge losses that threaten our well-being. The book demonstrates how clinicians can help patients regain meaning and purpose once again.

The authors in these chapters sensitively annotate their therapeutic journeys with their patients, all of whom grapple with extremely difficult emotional conditions. There is much that can be learned about going-on-being from psychoanalysts, who have always worked in the depth of the unconscious psychic dimension. The authors focus on the psychic processes, the core experiences, and the qualities of selfhood that help to move the human soul through despair on to hope and new beginnings. Rich clinical vignettes illustrate these ideas in a way that is sure to help clinicians and other readers face and work with their own and others’ places of pain and challenge.

We have all been shaken by the winds of unsettling social and political change over the past few years; hence this book will appeal to a wide audience. Psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, clinical social workers, counselors, students and others in the helping professions will find this book essential reading, as will members of the wider public who have experienced challenges in their own or their loved one’s “going-on-being”.

Edited by: Michelle Flax, J. Gail White
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
Weight: 410g
ISBN: 9781032993843
ISBN 10: 1032993847
Pages: 206
Publication Date: 04 August 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

PART l: Going-on-Being through Losses 1. Free to Mourn and Mourning to be Free. Elizabeth Sullivan 2. East of the Awning. Staying the Course and Moving on. Juliette Heeg 3. Potential Space in the Uncertainty of the Pandemic. Alexia Camfield 4. Going-on-Being: Aging, Agency and Downsizing. Michael Stern PART II: Going-on-Being through Threats to the Self 1. Living atop archaic agonies: Treating Children Suffering from Early Trauma. Brent Willock 2. Philoctetes at 11am. Ionas Sapountzis 3. I Rage, Therefore I am. Brent Willock 4. Accepting Death: The Role of Psychic Organizers in Death Awareness Joy Dryer PART III: Representation and Going On Being 1. Going-on-Being in Challenging Times: Mythology and Psychoanalysis. Renee Cherow O’Leary 2. Going-on-Being in the Body: Through the Concrete Use of the Body to Symbolic Use of the Mind. J. Gail White & Michelle Flax 3. So Close and Yet so Far Away: Psychoanalytic Treatment and Recovery from Psychosis Inducing Trauma. Burton Seitler PART IV: Going on Being Through Social- Political Upheaval 1. Dehumanization and Going-On-Being after Catastrophic Trauma. John Sloane 2. Striving to Create a Safe Space in an Unsafe World: Responding to Students’ Needs in the Days After October 7th. Ionas Sapountzis & Amira Simha-Alpern 3. Going on Being in Two Cultures: Nepantla- In- between the First and Second Generation of Latinx Immigrant, Higher Education, Scholarship Students . Helen Quinones 4. Beyond Neutrality: The Role of Political Beliefs in the Therapeutic Relationship. John O’Leary PART V: Going-on-Being in the Countertransference Working with individuals 1. Going-on-Being When the Going Gets Rough: An Impasse in the Negative Transference/Countertransference Heidi Knoll 2. When There is No Room to Play. Mehr Afarin-Kohan Working with Couples 3. Going on Being as a Couple during Environmental Trauma. Anastasia Tsamparli 4. Taking Sides: Managing Strong Countertransference Feelings in Couple Therapy. Melinda Blitzer

Michelle Flax, Ph.D., is a Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst in private practice in Toronto, Canada; Supervising Psychoanalyst and Faculty, Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Faculty at the Advanced Training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program (ATPPP). J. Gail White, Ph.D., is a Psychoanalyst in private practice in Toronto; Supervising Psychoanalyst and Faculty, Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis; and Student Progress committee member of the Advanced Program in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (ATPPP).

Reviews for Going on Being in Challenging Times: Psychoanalytic Reflections

'Winnicott’s concept of “going-on-being” has been influential, but it has not received detailed and in-depth treatment – until now. In this excellent, wide ranging, and timely book, a diverse and talented group of psychoanalytic authors relate going-on-being to loss, mourning, trauma, social upheaval, and much else. This book is an essential resource for the clinician, those interested in psychoanalytic theory, and anyone else interested in the human condition.' Joseph Fernando, M.D. Training Analyst, Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis. Director, Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis; author of “A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Trauma: Post-Traumatic Mental Functioning, the Zero Process, and the Construction of Reality.”