COVER -- CONTENTS -- ABOUT THE AUTHOR -- Introduction -- CHAPTER ONE Creative and uncreative suffering -- Winnicott's legacy -- The alternative route that is also an alternating one -- The question of agency and passivity -- CHAPTER TWO Psychic anaesthetics -- Sara and her drugs: resisting anaesthesia -- From temporary to permanent -- The role of ideologies -- CHAPTER THREE Psychic "justice" -- A concern for psychic "justice" -- Fate as the default of destiny -- From the "social" to the "psychological" -- CHAPTER FOUR The shadow revisited -- Percival and the engineering sanctuary -- Confronting the shadow -- The default of projective strategies -- Dr Jekyll: a case that is not so strange -- CHAPTER FIVE The relational outlook -- Company and solitude -- The wish to gain and loss aversion -- CHAPTER SIX The question of endurance -- Nirmala: patiently resisting non-existence -- The less travelled path -- Travelling the path -- CHAPTER SEVEN The challenge of interpretation -- The use of metaphor -- The problem of literality -- The question of psychic effort -- The experience of relief -- CHAPTER EIGHT Moving forward -- The idea of forward moving -- Negotiating (with) painful emotions -- The "teens" transition -- CHAPTER NINE Psychic growth -- Pain and psychic growth -- Construction and deconstruction -- Repetition compulsion revisited -- REFERENCES -- INDEX.