So the Witch Won't Eat Me

Fantasy and the Child's Fear of Infanticide

By (author) Dorothy Bloch

Paperback - £63.00

Publication date:

07 July 1977

Length of book:

256 pages

Publisher

Jason Aronson, Inc.

ISBN-13: 9781568212593

In So the Witch Won't Eat Me Bloch draws on 25 years of psychoanalytic practice. Her book is both a summary of her experience as a therapist and a disclosure of what she has learned about the inner workings of the human mind. She believes that the fear of infanticide, which originates in our vulnerability as infants, is later compounded by the magical thinking that leads us as children to blame ourselves for any unhappy development in our environment and therefore to anticipate punishment. As she also demonstrates, psychoanalytic treatment can be very effective in resolving the resulting emotional problems.
This book presents an exceptionally lucid and sensitive description of the role of destructive aggression in the mind. The author demonstrates the extent to which primitive attempts to defend against it figure in the thoughts and fantasies of human beings during the various periods of psychological development. She beautifully illuminates the constructive uses of aggression in interpersonal relations.