Cupid S Knife Women S Anger And Agency In Violent Relationships

Much domestic violence literature has called attention to the fact that women's material needs for shelter, daycare, employment, and legal protection may render them helpless to leave toxic relationships. Yet, even with the provision of these, many women remain tightly wound in their abusers' embrace. In Cupid's Knife: Women's Anger and Agency in Violent Relationships, Abby Stein draws on the gripping narratives of physically and emotionally abused women to illuminate how splitting off their own aggression undermines women's agency, making it almost impossible for them to leave violent partners. Psychology, with its focus on 'managing' men's anger in violent relationships, has had little to offer in the way of substantive critical work with women on the identification, integration and constructive use of a range of darker emotions typically labelled as antithetical to the norms for female behaviour. In this book, Abby Stein shows that although a number of psychological processes that contribute to the intractability of abusive relationships have been identified – such as trauma bonding and learned helplessness – their recognition has offered no clinical pathway out of the abyss. Stein suggests that our attention to other aspects of the internal world, the relational framework, and the cultural context in which both operate, may be more useful than current interventions in determining individual treatments that break the oft-cited 'cycle of violence'. More globally, Cupid's Knife: Women's Anger and Agency in Violent Relationships jumpstarts a provocative conversation about how female aggression can be repurposed as a catalyst for social change. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, criminologists, students and the lay reader with an interest in clinical treatment, interpersonal psychoanalysis, domestic violence, gender roles, dissociation and aggression.

Gender, Homicide, and the Politics of Responsibility explores the competing and contradictory understandings of violence against women and men’s responsibility. It situates these within the personal and political intersections of neoliberal and ‘postfeminist’ imperatives of individualisation, choice, and empowerment. As violence against women has become a national and international policy priority, feminist concerns about violence against women, and men’s responsibility, have entered the mainstream only to be articulated in politically contradictory ways. This book explores themes of responsibility for violence, and the social and legal consequences that men and women uniquely or differently encounter. By drawing on high-profile cases of homicide, an extensive literature on feminist perspectives on violence, and compelling focus group discussions, the book examines the politicised claims regarding the ‘responsibility’ of men and women as both victims and offenders in intimate relationships. Deploying a range of interdisciplinary approaches, it utilises a blend of cultural theory and psychosocial analysis to offer an account of the infiltration of postfeminist and neoliberal sensibilities of individualism and responsibilisation in the social, legal, and interpersonal imaginary. The book makes contributions to several fields, such as the current public policy initiatives to hold men accountable for violence against women; understanding public attitudes to violence against women; and contextualising the challenges faced by a number of feminist reforms that seek to address these issues. An accessible and compelling read, Gender, Homicide, and the Politics of Responsibility will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, gender studies and those interested in understanding the debates surrounding violence against women, violence by women, and the social construction of responsibility and responsibilisation.

The Dissociative Mind in Psychoanalysis: Understanding and Working With Trauma is an invaluable and cutting edge resource providing the current theory, practice, and research on trauma and dissociation within psychoanalysis. Elizabeth Howell and Sheldon Itzkowitz bring together experts in the field of dissociation and psychoanalysis, providing a comprehensive and forward-looking overview of the current thinking on trauma and dissociation. The volume contains articles on the history of concepts of trauma and dissociation, the linkage of complex trauma and dissociative problems in living, different modalities of treatment and theoretical approaches based on a new understanding of this linkage, as well as reviews of important new research. Overarching all of these is a clear explanation of how pathological dissociation is caused by trauma, and how this affects psychological organization -- concepts which have often been largely misunderstood. The Dissociative Mind in Psychoanalysis will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapists, trauma therapists, and students.

"In Female Rage, Mary Valentis and Anne Devane, both professors of literature, confront rage head-on, explaining why it is epidemic among women, why women need to acknowledge it, and how they can use it to empower their lives. Drawing on examples from mythology (particularly the myth of Medusa), literature, and film, as well as interviews with women and psychotherapists, Valentis and Devane let readers know that rage is a part of every woman's experience. Beginning with the rage of the little girl who perceives that being male confers privilege and moving on to the young woman who hides her feelings behind the mask of a pretty face, the authors discuss the all-too-common dependency among women that leads to victimization in relationships. And they explain how innocence and gullibility sow the seeds of rage." "The authors also discuss the physical and emotional problems, such as depression, anorexia, and bulimia, that result when rage is turned inward. They talk about the tendency to label enraged women as hysterical or crazy, about how women tend to direct their rage toward other women, and about the rage experienced by older women against a culture that deifies youth." "Most important, they caution us not to become stuck in rage and indulge in fantasies of revenge. Instead, they coach us in how to find our undercurrent of rage, train it, and use it to fulfill our dreams."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Despite mounting references to the "transgenerational transmission of violence," we still lack a compelling understanding of the linkage between the interpersonal violence of early life and the criminal violence of adulthood. In Prologue to Violence, Abby Stein draws on the gripping narratives of 65 incarcerated subjects and extensive material from law enforcement files to remedy this lacuna in both the forensic and psychodynamic literature. In the process, she calls into question prevailing beliefs about criminal character and motivation. For Stein the early trauma to which adult criminals are subjected remains unformulated and, as such, unavailable for reflection. Contrary to common belief, these criminals, especially sex murderers, do not commit their crimes in a rational or fully conscious way. They are not driven by deviant fantasy, their psychopathy is not inborn, and they rarely commit acts of violence "without conscience." Stein’s interdisciplinary analysis of her data infuses contemporary relational psychoanalysis with the insights of neuroscience, traumatology, criminology, and cognitive and narrative psychology. A powerful challenge to offender treatment programs to address the shaping impact of childhood trauma rather than merely to "correct" the cognitions of violent offenders, Prologue to Violence will be equally compelling to researchers and academics investigating child abuse and adult violence. Its mental health readership will be broad and deep, ranging beyond clinicians who work with offender populations to all therapists who wrestle with experiences of dissociation and aggressive enactment in everyday life.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • More than one million copies sold! A “brilliant” (Lupita Nyong’o, Time), “poignant” (Entertainment Weekly), “soul-nourishing” (USA Today) memoir about coming of age during the twilight of apartheid “Noah’s childhood stories are told with all the hilarity and intellect that characterizes his comedy, while illuminating a dark and brutal period in South Africa’s history that must never be forgotten.”—Esquire Winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor and an NAACP Image Award • Named one of the best books of the year by The New York Time, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Esquire, Newsday, and Booklist Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love.