The book recasts the concept of estrangement as `reason in an unreasonable form', traces its development in writings of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, supplies a game-theoretic reconstruction of it, and assesses its significance for a critical understanding of John Rawls's philosophy.

A guide for parents whose adult children have cut off contact that reveals the hidden logic of estrangement, explores its cultural causes, and offers practical advice for parents trying to reestablish contact with their adult children. “Finally, here’s a hopeful, comprehensive, and compassionate guide to navigating one of the most painful experiences for parents and their adult children alike.”—Lori Gottlieb, psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Labeled a silent epidemic by a growing number of therapists and researchers, estrangement is one of the most disorienting and painful experiences of a parent's life. Popular opinion typically tells a one-sided story of parents who got what they deserved or overly entitled adult children who wrongly blame their parents. However, the reasons for estrangement are far more complex and varied. As a result of rising rates of individualism, an increasing cultural emphasis on happiness, growing economic insecurity, and a historically recent perception that parents are obstacles to personal growth, many parents find themselves forever shut out of the lives of their adult children and grandchildren. As a trusted psychologist whose own daughter cut off contact for several years and eventually reconciled, Dr. Joshua Coleman is uniquely qualified to guide parents in navigating these fraught interactions. He helps to alleviate the ongoing feelings of shame, hurt, guilt, and sorrow that commonly attend these dynamics. By placing estrangement into a cultural context, Dr. Coleman helps parents better understand the mindset of their adult children and teaches them how to implement the strategies for reconciliation and healing that he has seen work in his forty years of practice. Rules of Estrangement gives parents the language and the emotional tools to engage in meaningful conversation with their child, the framework to cultivate a healthy relationship moving forward, and the ability to move on if reconciliation is no longer possible. While estrangement is a complex and tender topic, Dr. Coleman's insightful approach is based on empathy and understanding for both the parent and the adult child.

From the characterological struggle that leads to the breakup through the difficult adjustments that come after the marriage is over, this volume examines the emotional process of divorce. Illustrated throughout with evocative case examples, this book explores why marriages fail, the feelings and reactions of both the rejecting and the rejected partners, the psychodynamics of jealousy, the possibility of reconciliation, and the impact of divorce on children.

Since Socrates, and through Descartes to the present day, the problems of self-knowledge have been central to philosophy's understanding of itself. Today the idea of ''first-person authority''--the claim of a distinctive relation each person has toward his or her own mental life--has been challenged from a number of directions, to the point where many doubt the person bears any distinctive relation to his or her own mental life, let alone a privileged one. In Authority and Estrangement, Richard Moran argues for a reconception of the first-person and its claims. Indeed, he writes, a more thorough repudiation of the idea of privileged inner observation leads to a deeper appreciation of the systematic differences between self-knowledge and the knowledge of others, differences that are both irreducible and constitutive of the very concept and life of the person. Masterfully blending philosophy of mind and moral psychology, Moran develops a view of self-knowledge that concentrates on the self as agent rather than spectator. He argues that while each person does speak for his own thought and feeling with a distinctive authority, that very authority is tied just as much to the disprivileging of the first-person, to its specific possibilities of alienation. Drawing on certain themes from Wittgenstein, Sartre, and others, the book explores the extent to which what we say about ourselves is a matter of discovery or of creation, the difficulties and limitations in being ''objective'' toward ourselves, and the conflicting demands of realism about oneself and responsibility for oneself. What emerges is a strikingly original and psychologically nuanced exploration of the contrasting ideals of relations to oneself and relations to others.

I am the product of estrangement. My childhood journey finds a heart-wrenching repetition in the present. Adult child estrangement is a lesson in the power of the human spirit. It is amazing how the willingness to survive can deliver us to a sense of purpose. This is a story about the search for personal truth. It is raw and honest. I openly discuss the debilitating circumstances that brought me to my knees. I share the grave moments when I lost myself because I allowed someone else to define me. It is a tale that finds me rising from the ashes with the discovery of how to proceed in kindness. I find meaning in everything, even if it's as simple as a good cup of coffee. Readers Say: Intense, raw, insightful and thoughtful. - AL A heart-rending story of abuse, neglect, and love along with the complexities that challenge our understanding of these relationships. - KF A difficult journey with a reflective voice. Christine's words and phrases are eloquent and worth sharing with anyone who has struggled through addiction, abuse, and rejection. - BF Amazing dictation. The silence has been spoken. It has been put into words that needed to be expressed. Bigger than estrangement. Words of authority. The right of a parent. Revealing what she could no longer bear. - MS Gripping. I ran the gamut of emotions as my empathetic soul was on overload. I picked it up to read, and couldn't put it down until I was finished. - AK

Literature can have a disturbing effect on its readers. It unsettles our hold on everyday experience and makes us strangers and exiles. Anna Smith argues that this is the side of literature which attracts critic and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva. Kristeva is drawn to states of extremity where language and the psyche are under duress, and in this book Smith examines the way the alchemical properties of words may transform these extremities into what Kristeva calls 'a fire of tongues, an exit from representation'.

Alienation has objective, social-structural determinants, yet is experienced subjectively as a psychological state involving both emotion and cognition. Part I considers conceptualizations of alienation and affect in historical context, emphasizing Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Simmel, and Weber. Part II develops a theory of the affective bases of Seeman’s original five varieties of alienation – normlessness, meaninglessness, self-estrangement, cultural estrangement, and powerlessness. The book argues that both normlessness and cultural estrangement manifest in two distinct forms and involve distinct emotions. Thus it develops the affective bases of seven distinct varieties of alienation. This work synthesizes classical and contemporary alienation theory and the sociology of emotions. It contributes to political sociology, and finds application in social psychiatry and related health and social-service fields that treat traumatized and highly alienated individuals.