A Memoir of Psychotherapy

In this memoir an experienced psychotherapist describes a fifty-year personal psychotherapy, more than thirty years of this therapy as a patient of Dr. Michael Eigen. The author’s and Michael Eigen’s lived experience of madness and murder is examined for insight into the possibilities of working psychotherapeutically with very damaged psyches and souls. Michael Eigen’s theory and practice are part of the investigation, and questions are raised about what can be enough, if anything, in the successful psychotherapy of people in profound and enduring psychological and emotional pain.

Some Psychological Aspects of Juvenile Delinquency

In this address to magistrates, Winnicott discusses how crime produces public feelings of revenge. The normal child, helped by his own home, grows a capacity to control himself. In between the extremes of normal and antisocial ill children are children who can still achieve a belief in stability if a continuous experience of control by loving persons is provided. Winnicott refers to the wartime experience of belated provision of a stable environment for children deprived of home life in the hostels for evacuated children, especially those who were difficult to billet. For children deprived of home life, personal psychotherapy is directed towards enabling the child to complete his or her emotional development.