Table of Contents

Foreword -- Prologue -- Introduction -- Space -- Human space, psychic space, analytic space, geopolitical space -- Place, time, and land -- Unsettling the settler: history, culture, race, and the Australian self -- The Australian patient: traumatic pasts and the work of history -- Lost children -- Coming to terms with the country: some incidents on first meeting Aboriginal locations and Aboriginal thoughts -- Creating mental space: assimilating recovered Maori self-representations -- Dislocation -- The trauma of geographical dislocation: leaving, arriving, mourning, and becoming -- The clinical discovery of time and place -- Epilogue

About the Author

Salman Akhtar, MD, was born in India and completed his medical and psychiatric education there. Upon arriving in the USA in 1973, he repeated his psychiatric training at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, and then obtained psychoanalytic training from the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Institute. Currently, he is Professor of Psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College and a training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. He has authored, edited or co-edited more than 300 publications including books on psychiatry and psychoanalysis and several collections of poetry. He is also a Scholar-in-Residence at the Inter-Act Theatre Company in Philadelphia. Salman Akhtar received the Sigourney Award in 2012. Maria Teresa Savio Hooke is a training analyst, a Past President of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society, and a member of the IPA Public Information Committee. She is Co-Chair for Europe of the IPA Committee on Ageing, a member of the IPA China Committee and Chair of Outreach and Communication. She was awarded the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity from the Italian President of the Republic for services to psychoanalysis in Australia.

Reviews

"This book is a multifaceted attempt to understand the psychological mysteries of land, space, native cultures, changing eras, and geographical dislocation. It shows us that many remote and seemingly peaceful areas of the world have their own dark and silent pasts in which their original inhabitants were often brutally decimated and those who remained were not allowed to voice their emotional and cultural legacy. Weaving history, geography, myth, philosophy, and psychoanalysis together, this book tries to understand why such atrocities were committed, how those subjected to these 'crimes' might have perceived them, and what the long-term, transgenerational consequences of these historical events are. The value of this book, however, transcends meaningfully looking at the past. It reminds us that we are all increasingly faced with the 'Other'. By taking a reflective stance, The Geography of Meanings helps the reader to overcome apparently unbridgeable conflicts and to respond with empathy, curiosity, and awe to the many differences and similarities within the human race and its experience in this world!"--Alessandra Piontelli