Why are emotions lives so important? What light does psychoanalytic understanding shed on this? Freud was writing a long time ago, so is his thinking still of contemporary relevance ?

In psychotherapy, the world of emotions, affects and feelings are the bread and butter of clinical work. This small volume, first published in the series Ideas in Psychoanalysis, by the Freud Museum in 2001, and here revised, and updated, illustrates how psychoanalysis can profoundly illuminate the emotional and affective aspects of experience.

Using everyday examples, Music shows how early experiences provide the roots of later emotional and relational life, and we see how much of our emotional lives are unconscious. The book looks at issues such as how some people can seem to feel too much, others too little. It examines how feelings, whether anger, sadness, or grief, can be avoided, defended against, or cut off from, and the worrying repercussions of repressing or denying feelings. Central to all this is how psychoanalytic thinking enables us to tolerate a broader range of emotional experiences, both positive and negative, and enhances our capacity for deeper levels of self-acceptance.

Dr. Graham Music is a Consultant Child Psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic in London, an adult therapist in private practice, an author, trainer and public speaker