Review: "Intimacy and Alienation proposes both a therapy and theory of human consciousness. Russell Meares posits a duplex self in the William James model of an 'I' and 'me' but extends it to include a third realm of being which manifests itself in a kind of intimate conversation, which is non-linear in form and brings into being an 'inner' life or self. When the fabric of such self is damaged by a traumatic experience, the resultant sense of an inner void leaves the individual without a voice other than one that is externalised and environmentally directed. The traumatic event is 'unconscious' both in the sense that it is not represented in an imaginative linguistic form and is recorded in a memory system not that of ordinary consciousness and not immediately accessible to patient or therapist." "It is the task of the therapist to foster the emergence of a form of conversation which shows elements of 'the stream of consciousness' and which will allow the integration of the traumatic memory into the patient's experience of self." "At once invaluable to professionals in the field of psychiatry and psychotherapy, Intimacy and Alienation is a work of wide interest to anyone interested in theories of memory, language and human consciousness."--Jacket