Ann Halam

#2

In recent years, memories and reconstructions of incestuous child abuse have become common features of psychoanalytic treatment. Among some clinicians, such abuse is suspected even when there is little evidence. How does the analyst distinguish between incest real and imagined, and how do recovered memories of incest affect the analyst? In this poignant and beautifully written study, Elaine Siegel brings new insights to bear on these timely questions. An inveterate note taker, Siegel discloses the countertransferential ruminations and associations to the occurrence of incest at various stages during the treatment process over the course of 30 years of clinical work. The manner in which her "analytic instrument" evolved and was shaped by her analysands' stories makes for a fascinating subtext in a book that addresses itself to the differences and similarities during treatment of real and imagined incestuous abuse. Among the powerfully disturbing clinical cases at the heart of this study are two reports detailing the lengthy analyses of women who found corroboration for multigenerational incest. Siegel also presents two cases in which patients retracted their claims of incest toward the end of their treatments. Through the medium of these and other reports, Siegel explores how psychoanalysts are struggling both to understand incestuous abuse and to accommodate their treatment techniques to shifting societal perspectives.

#3

The "magic" that once was America died horribly along with most of the Earth's inhabitants when an asteroid crashed into the planet sometime during the twenty-first century. Hundreds of years have passed, and all that remains of the time before are fragmented memories distorted by superstition -- as a tragically reduced populace suffers greatly under the tyranny of a repressive ruling order. But destiny has chosen Disme Latimer to lead a wasted world out of the darkness ... with a book. Written by a courageous scientist ancestor, it is a sacred, unsettling tome rife with disturbing ideas and revelations ... and an impossible hope that compels a gentle, troubled young woman to abandon her abusive home in search of truth and her true self. But common "wisdom" and lore warn of grave dangers out in the world. Evil is there, a malevolence beyond imagining. And in the depths of the Earth, a gargantuan beast asleep for centuries has begun to stir ...