Feeling Strong: How Power Issues Affect Our Ability to Direct Our Own Lives

In Feeling Strong, noted psychoanalyst Ethel S. Person redefines the notion of power. The stigma of evil we associate with the subject of power comes from this one conception of power -- the drive for dominance over other people, or, in its most extreme form, an overriding and often ruthless lust for total command. But this is far too limited a definition.

Pointing to a more fulfilling sense of self-empowerment than is being touted in pop-psychology manuals of our time, Feeling Strong shows us that power is really our ability to produce an effect, to make something we want to happen actually take place. Power is a desire and a drive, and it is central in our lives, dictating much of our behavior and consuming much of our interior lives.

Drawing from her expertise honed in clinical practice, as well as from examples in literature and true-life vignettes, Person shows how you can achieve authentic power to find something that matters; to feel inner certainty; to find a personality of your own and effectively plot your life story.

Ethel S. Person is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University and a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. A major contributor to psychiatric and psychoanalytic literature, she is author or editor of ten books, including Dreams of Love and Fateful Encounters: The Power of Romantic Love and By Force of Fantasy: How We Live Our Lives. She lectures frequently here and abroad. She lives in New York City.