Descent into Darkness

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The purpose of this book is to acquaint educated interested persons with, as well as to help students and professionals in the mental health field learn about the psychodynamics of mental illness. To facilitate learning about the issues involved and in order to make this information more convincing, more intelligible, and hopefully more interesting for the reader, I have cast it in the unusual form of what I call a didactic novel. To my knowledge this has not been tried before. Here the lectures, the discussions, and the arguments are interspersed with dramatizations illustrating how the basic assumptions behind psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis are experienced in actual everyday living situations. Also dramatized and discussed are some of the current controversies in the field and the socioeconomic influences that bring pressure on those who practice psychodynamic therapy and influence their theory formation. The approach I have employed enables me to present arguments among proponents of different theoretical orientations and I hope to bring to life the interpersonal difficulties involved in reaching common ground even among trained and experienced therapists. Because of the novel form, terms which may seem unclear at first will be gradually explained and returned to as we move along in the narrative. The action of the novel as well as the discussions take place on a group tour of ancient Turkey with stops in Berlin and Milan for the ostensive purpose of showing the group how ancient and early historical cultures are piled up on and influence each other, just like the early archaic experiences and fantasies that lie at the bottom of human mentation.