Elements of Self-Destruction - Softcover

Potter, Brent

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1780490593 ISBN 13: 9781780490595

Publisher: Routledge, 2013

Synopsis

The stated purpose of this phenomenological psychoanalytic study is to make the phenomenon of self-destruction and its vicissitudes intelligible. It presents the nature of the relationship between the essence of technology and the essence of self-destructiveness.

About this title

About the Author

Dr. Brent Potter is a psychotherapist with 20 years of direct clinical service. He is the Director for the Society for Laingian Studies and the R.D. Laing Institute. Brent is the author of numerous articles whose topics include: innovative and effective mental healthcare models, analytical psychology, humanistic psychology, existential-phenomenology, psychoanalysis, the psychotic register of the mind, character and personality disorders, chemical dependency and child / adolescent mental health concerns.
 
His first book, 'Elements of Self-Destruction' is out via Karnac Books: (karnacbooks.com/Product.asp?PID=32499).

Brent welcomes all correspondence and can be contacted via Facebook (facebook.com/drbrentpotter), by email (brentpotterma@yahoo.com) or by phone (818.337.9701).

From the Back Cover

• "Elements of Self-Destruction is a wide-ranging, reader-friendly study of the enigma of self-destructiveness. The study is unique in the literature in its hermeneutic-phenomenological approach to this subject matter, seeking understanding from within the experiential worlds of those engaged in self-destruction. Drawing on the thinking of Bion and Heidegger, Potter makes a fascinating proposal concerning the intimate relationship between the essence of technology--which reduces beings, including human beings, to meaningless resources to be exploited--and the essence of self-destructiveness, illustrating his thesis with evocative discussions of child trafficking, pornography, and the Holocaust. Readers of this book will be richly rewarded." -Robert Stolorow, PhD, author of World, Affectivity, Trauma: Heidegger and Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis
• "Brent Potter touches a central problem of our time -- human destructiveness. Destructiveness has always been part of our nature but presses us all the more with our added technological capacities and global scale reach. It is the elephant in the room we try to find ways around, lacking adequate tools or capacity to address directly or well. Books like this are imperative as a way to keep destructiveness in focus and stimulate growth towards working with forces that injure and maim. Potter's research peels layers off evasiveness while adding to the store of wisdom needed to address who we are and how we work." -Michael Eigen, PhD, author of Contact With the Depths and Psychic Deadness
• "Brent Potter guides us on an erudite, elegant and deeply instructive hermeneutic investigation into the most disturbing and contradictory of all human impulses -- one, as he shows, potentially inherent in all of us - the urge to self-annihilation." -Gabor Mate, MD, author of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1780490593
• ISBN 13: 9781780490595
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 202