The Promise : Who Is in Charge of Time and Space?

Our Sense Of Identity (our Psychological Birth Sometime In The First Year Of Life) Begins With The Feeling That We Are The Center Of The Universe, Protected By Godlike Benevolent Parents Who Will Enable Us To Live Happily Ever After. This Is The Promise That Is Never Given Up, Lurking In The Unconscious Part Of Our Minds. We Must Learn, Reluctantly, That Our Parents Are Unable To Protect Us From The Passage Of Time, From Decline, And From Death. Yet We Retain, Even As Adults, The Delusion That, While Others May Die, We Never Will. This Adds Fuel To The Murderous Anger We Are Born With And Must Master, Alongside The Contradictory Vertical Split In The Mind That We Are Destined To Die. The Promise Is Described In Patients And In Examples From Biography And Fiction In Relation To Anniversaries And Specific Holidays. The Book Ends With A Specific Illustration In Relation To An Eight-month-old Infant. Promise, Change, And Trauma -- On The Trauma Of Seeing Mother's Genitals -- Chronic Trauma And Soul Murder : Literary And Clinical Examples -- Haunting And Parricide -- Virginia Woolf Haunted -- Rage As A Fact Of Life (or, Who Is In Charge Of Time And Space?) -- Killing (or Not Killing) The King -- Vladimir Nabokov : Murderous Impulses Displaced Onto Freud And Literary Rivals, And Sublimated In Relation To Butterflies And Chess -- The Psychological Effect Of Birthdays And Anniversaries -- Jewish Holidays : Chanukah, Purim, Passover, Rosh Hashana, And Yom Kippur -- Christian Holidays : Christmas, New Year's Day, Lent, And Easter -- Secular Holidays : Thanksgiving, St. Valentine's Day, Memorial Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, And The Fourth Of July -- Holiday From Psychoanalysis : As August Approaches -- Being Both Sexes, Addendum : A Clinical Observation On Anal Sexuality -- Stella, The Infant As The Centre Of The Universe. Leonard Shengold. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 153-157) And Index. Our sense of identity begins (our psychological birth sometime in the first year of life) with the feeling that we are the centre of the universe, protected by godlike benevolent parents who will enable us to live happily ever after. This is the'Promise'that is never given up, lurking in the unconscious part of our minds. We must learn, reluctantly, that our parents are unable to protect us from the passage of time, from decline, and from death. Yet we retain, even as adults, the delusion that, while others may die, we never will. This adds fuel to the murderous anger we are born with and must master, alongside the contradictory vertical split in the mind that we are destined to die. The'Promise'is described in patients and in examples from biography and fiction in relation to anniversaries and specific holidays. The book ends with a specific illustration in relation to an eight-month-old infant. Our sense of identity begins (our psychological birth sometime in the first year of life) with the feeling that we are the centre of the universe, protected by godlike benevolent parents who will enable us to live happily ever after. This is the ""Promise"" that is never given up, lurking in the unconscious part of our minds. We must learn, reluctantly, that our parents are unable to protect us from the passage of time, from decline, and from death. Yet we retain, even as adults, the delusion that, while others may die, we never will. This adds fuel to the murderous anger we are born with and m