2nd Edition
Experiencing Endings and Beginnings From Birth to Old Age
Experiencing Endings and Beginnings highlights the emotional turmoil which, to a greater or lesser extent, accompanies the changes we experience throughout life. It considers the nature of the anxieties aroused by a new situation, changes in our circumstances, beginnings and endings of relationships, gains and losses, and the ending of a previous state throughout the lifespan.
Endings and beginnings are shown to be closely related, for every new situation entered into, more often than not, involves having to let go of some of the advantages of the previous one as well as losing what is familiar and facing fear of the unknown. Isca Wittenberg shows how all these aspects of change evoke primitive anxieties, stemming from our earliest experiences of coming into this world. The book considers life changes including birth and weaning, going to nursery and school, beginning work, marriage, parenthood, and retirement, with reference to clinical examples. This revised edition includes a new chapter by the author examining advanced old age.
Experiencing Endings and Beginnings will be essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in practice and in training. It will also be of great interest to other professionals and to readers interested in understanding change across the lifespan.
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Preface to the first edition
Author’s Note
CHAPTER ONE
Learning from experience of endings and beginnings
CHAPTER TWO
From life inside mother to life outside
CHAPTER THREE
Separateness and new connections
CHAPTER FOUR
Weaning
CHAPTER FIVE
Becoming a child in the family
CHAPTER SIX
Going to nursery
CHAPTER SEVEN
Beginnings and endings in school
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tertiary education and entering the world of work
CHAPTER NINE
Getting married
CHAPTER TEN
Becoming a parent
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Bereavement
CHAPTER TWELVE
Retirement
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Growing old and facing death
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Growing ever older – facing the end of life
References
Bibliography
Index
Biography
Isca Wittenberg is a consultant psychoanalytic psychotherapist for children and adults who worked at the Tavistock Clinic for twenty-five years and was vice-chairman of the Tavistock for ten years. She is a lifetime honorary member of the Tavistock Clinic, and her previous books include Psycho-Analytic Insight and Relationships and The Emotional Experience of Teaching and Learning, the latter with contributions from Gianna Williams and Elsie Osborne.
"As she approaches the age of 100, it is truly remarkable that Isca Wittenberg has been able to continue her research into life’s ‘endings and beginnings’ with the same enthusiasm, vigour and intellect she showed in former years.
She now brings her insight into extreme old age: the challenges and losses it presents and the accommodations which need to be arrived at. Far from being a depressing chapter on the frailties accompanying longevity, it gives a life-enhancing insight into how to be positive and still appreciate that which remains: nature, beauty, the joy of family.
She has lost none of her ability to arouse the readers’ emotional involvement in the case studies she describes. On the contrary, her comments are more perceptive than ever. Her particular gift is her ability to make her writing accessible to all: that is, to give complex psychoanalytical insights in language which the layman can also understand." - Lilian Levy, MBE
Praise for the first edition:
"This is a wonderfully conceived book – on beginnings and endings – that in the author’s hands becomes a portal to review the connecting threads throughout our lives. All of us who worked with or knew Isca Wittenberg at the Tavistock were privileged to be in the presence of a very rare sensibility, characterized by a wise generosity of mind, the spirit of which is immanent throughout this deeply moving book. Now others will be in her company and shall enjoy the privilege of her companionship." – Christopher Bollas, author, The Shadow of the Object, China on the Mind and The Freudian Moment
"Isca Wittenberg has become very well known for her original approach to thinking about beginnings and endings in life and as they appear and challenge us in clinical and teaching contexts. This book is the fruit of her long engagement with this topic, and it is a most engaging overview of the major transitions in the human life cycle. It is written with freshness and simplicity and offers the reader an encounter with a writer who draws on her personal and professional experience with freedom and zest. A book about everyday life by a far-from-everyday person, which I think will stimulate and charm many, because it imparts wisdom so lightly." - Margaret Rustin, Child and Adult Psychotherapist
"Reading this book feels like being taken by the hand of a warm-hearted and experienced author going through your own life’s transitions: from life inside the mother to life outside, from separateness to finding new ways of connecting, from home and nursery to school and entering the world of work, from living alone to getting married, and from the experience of bereavement and retirement to the last step: growing old and facing death. The author convincingly includes psychoanalytic theory, vividly described clinical cases and reflections of her own life, while never excluding the spiritual dimension. In all these phases of life she keeps the infant aspects of the grown-ups alive. The book stimulates a deep emotional response on the reader. Isca Wittenberg writes with such liveliness that you think she is a young writer full of life and understanding." – Professor Gertraud Diem-Wille, training analyst for children, adolescents and adults of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society and the International Psychoanalytical Association
"A gem of a book. In her late eighties Isca Wittenberg writes as clearly as ever, distilling a lifetime's experience into a work of genuine wisdom. This book displays a deep psychoanalytic understanding of the lifecourse married with a searching and compassionate mind, and has the added bonus of fascinating autobiographical fragments from one of the luminaries of child psychotherapy." - Graham Music, Consultant Child Psychotherapist, Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust
