In this compelling book, Lauren Levine explores the transformative power of stories and storytelling in psychoanalysis to heal psychic wounds and create shared symbolic meaning and coherence out of ungrieved loss and trauma.

Lauren Levine is joint Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. She teaches and presents both nationally and internationally, and has published articles about sociocultural, racial and relational trauma, resilience, and creativity. Dr. Levine is faculty at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis, and the Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center, where she's codirector of the One Year Program in Relational Studies. She is visiting faculty at the Institute for Relational and Group Psychotherapy in Athens, Greece, and the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society, and supervisor at the Institute for Relational Psychoanalysis of Philadelphia. Dr. Levine is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City.

Introduction 1. Transformative Resonance Across Relational Realms 2. Into Thin Air: The Interweaving of Shame, Recognition, and Creativity 3. Surviving Destruction and its Creative Potential for Agency and Desire 4. Mutual Vulnerability: Destruction and Reparation 5. Pina Bausch: Trauma, Memory and Creative Transformation 6. Finding Creative Means of Staying Enlivened when Locked in an Endless Present: Deconstructing the Film Room 7. Becoming the Storyteller of One's Own Life 8. Interrogating Race, Shame and Mutual Vulnerability in Psychoanalysis