Reviews
‘A powerful, unflinching and deep look from multiple vertices into our contemporary collective descent, epitomized by the COVID-19 pandemic and systemic racism in societies makes Ominous Transitions a strong, psychoactive read. The editors have brought forward the wisdom of an impressive coterie of authors who can address the tenuousness of hope for a better future together with reflective awareness of the spur of shame in the service of social justice. This volume can serve as a much needed guide for the troubled times we are traversing in this archetypal moment in global history.’
– Joseph Cambray, President/CEO, Pacifica Graduate Institute
Both timely and timeless, Ominous Transitions probes the darker aspects of the passageways from one fraught state of being to the next. Widely varying phenomena are addressed, from an everyday psychoanalytic session in turbulent times, to random, uncanny personal encounters on the street, to societal malaise and breakdown, to genocide. The essays offer clarifying and insightful explications of these experiences, drawing from such luminaries as Derrida, Lacan, Bion, Winnicott, Levinas, and Stiegler. Editors Hinton and Willemsen have given us an invaluable aid in understanding and withstanding the massive upheavals of the present day.’
– Margaret Crastnopol (Peggy), Ph.D. is a Seattle-based psychoanalyst and the author of Micro-trauma:A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Cumulative Psychic Injury, who writes and speaks on micro-trauma as well as on character and selfhood, the analyst’s Achilles’ heels, and grappling with obstacles to psychic growth
‘Hinton and Willemsen’s welcome follow-up to their award-winning Shame and Temporality is another collection of essays put together by these two expert editors whose latest volume brings to mind Schopenhauer’s insight that the world could be regarded as a giant penitentiary. Ominous Transitions is a book for those who crave something more than utopian resolutions. Instead, the pages of this extraordinarily thought provoking book are emblazened with foundational ideas from original thinkers such as Derrida’s différance, Heidegger’s thrownness, Giegerich’s (and others’) noetics, Lacan’s hontologie, Nietzsche’s simplified nihilism, and Stiegler’s neganthropocene. It is an exciting read and is highly recommended.’
– Ann Casement, LP, FRAI, FRSM, Professor, Oriental Academy of Analytical Psychology
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