What do we mean when we say of others, of family members, and particularly of our elders, that they are "a hard act to follow"? Are we speaking of their achievements, their personality, their talents or perhaps their overall bearing? In other words, what are these 'acts' that are so powerfully experienced by us as being hard to follow? What or who has made them appear so difficult to emulate?After considering shadows cast by parents in myth and in the Bible, we explore the psychological challenges that the shadows of fame or notoriety of parents have presented to their offspring in a variety of fields. The early chapters focus on personalities in psychoanalysis including Alice Miller and son, Martin, and Melanie Klein and daughter, Melitta Schmideberg. The remaining chapters centre on selected personalities in history/politics, music, art and literature, all viewed from an analytic perspective.

About the Author
Jonathan Burke first trained in social work and later became a hospital administrator before moving to London where he took up a post as a health planning consultant to UK hospitals and ministries of health abroad. His professional interest in the cancer field began with strategic studies he undertook examining the organisation of services for cancer patients in Cyprus. He is the author of the 'Enfield Cancer Directory', funded by Macmillan Cancer Relief, and for six years he managed the Cancer Life project on behalf of Enfield Disability Action before training as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. He has facilitated a range of seminars on cancer related issues, most recently helping develop the "Topic of Cancer" Seminar Series at the London Centre for Psychotherapy. He now works as a psychotherapist in private practice.

Reviews

"Jonathan Burke deserves thanks from this generation, and from future generations, for compiling this masterful collection of writings on the shadow (and light) cast by parents upon their children, who in turn provide a refraction of that illumination to their own children. For better or worse, this is our psychosocial fate. A clear message from Burke's book is that psychoanalytic perspectives take us very near to an understanding of these often ineffable, inevitable, and inescapable intergenerational influences."

-Howard Steele, PhD, professor and chair for clinical psychology, and co-director of the Center for Attachment Research, at the New School for Social Research, USA

"This is a deftly edited collection from a compelling group of contributors on a remarkably interesting topic. What do we inherit from being parented? From private memoirs to clinical studies to scholarly essays on mythology and literature, the book takes on an unusual aura of its own. Readers will rethink how family life is intrinsically traumatic and how we are all invited into the compelling challenge to put the shadow of that experience into differing forms of narrative."

-Christopher Bollas, PhD, psychoanalyst and author of China on the Mind and Catch Them Before They Fall: Psychoanalysis of Breakdown

Book Information
ISBN 9781782205470
Author Jonathan Burke
Format Paperback
Page Count 248
Imprint Karnac Books
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd