Selma Kramer

Thicker Than Blood addresses in depth the impact of adoption on biological parents, adoptive parents, adopted children, and siblings.

Sibling relationships and rivalry are as old as recorded history. This analysis explores that ambivalence between siblings casts its shadow throughout people's lifetimes and affects their choices of mates, relationships with their own children, and aversions to others.

How does culture affect child-rearing practices? How do factors such as poverty, ethnic difference, racial minority status, and having immigrant parents alter the experience of a growing child? Are there culturally distinct sub-groups within the African-American population? How ubiquitous are psychoanalytically derived schedules of personality development? In what form and to what extent are transference and countertransference affected by such racial, ethnic, and economic issues? In this volume, eight distinguished psychoanalysts (including some belonging to ethnic and racial minorities) attempt to answer these questions. They provide illuminating details of child-rearing practices in African-American, Indian, and Japanese families. They interweave mythological legacies, historical background, ethnographic data, and clinical observations into a rich tapestry of knowledge, empathy, and understanding. They try to tease out the variables of socioeconomic class from the issue of race and the ambiguities consequent upon raising children in a new and unfamiliar land from the ordinary and inevitable conflicts between generations.

Offers an exploration of the nonverbal elements in psychotherapy. This book argues that decoding nonverbal communication can lead to a deeper understanding of patients' problems.

Aims to clarify the similarities/differences in the ideas of Margaret Mahler and Heinz Kohut with regard to the mutuality and complexity of the interaction between the parents and the child in the development context. The book also examines the therapeutic encounter between analyst and analysand.