Ordinary People and Extra-ordinary Protections

<p>Many people come to analysis appearing quite 'ordinary' on the surface. However once below that surface we often come into contact with something quite unexpected: 'extra-ordinary protections' created to keep at bay any awareness of deeply traumatic happenings occurring at some point in life.</p><p>Judith Mitrani investigates the development and the function of these protections allowing the reader to witness the evolution of the process of transformation wherein defensiveness steadily mutates into communication.</p><p>She lucidly and artfully weaves detailed clinical with a variety of analytic concepts and her original notions - including 'unmentalized experience' and its expression in enactments; 'adhesive pseudo-object relations' and the way in which this contracts and compares with normal and narcissistic object relations - provide valuable tools for understanding the infantile transference/countertransference and for the refinement of our technique with primitive mental states.</p><p>Ordinary People and Extra-Ordinary Protections will prove stimulating and accessible in its style and substance to a broad analytic readership from the serious student of psychoanalysis to the most seasoned professional.</p>