Earth, Milky Way: punctum books, 2026. 108 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1-68571-244-0. DOI: 10.53288/0464.1.00. OPEN-ACCESS e-book and $22.00 in print: paperbound/5 X 8 in.
In Inner Conflicts, Sana Sheikh brings her reader right to the center of what it is to live a thought- and feeling-filled inner, relational, and socio-political life, that is, a life with ambivalence… Sheikh takes us insightfully and elegantly through on-the-ground dilemmas of identity and choice. Along the way, she makes available both ordinary language philosophy and the history of clinical psychology and psychoanalysis from the times of Bleuler and Freud through to the present. This book is beautifully written and completely engaging.
~ Nancy J. Chodorow, psychoanalyst, sociologist, and author of The Reproduction of Mothering, The Power of Feelings and The Psychoanalytic Ear and the Sociological Eye
What should I do? What is the right thing to do? What do I do when I don’t know what to do?
The difficulty in answering these questions does not come from a lack of knowledge but a deeper problem that requires us to look inward (and outward).
Inner Conflicts is meant to be read in times of upheaval. It traverses jagged terrain, giving voice to the unspoken doubts and contradictions that underlie our dearly held projects. Drawing from psychoanalytic theory, five chapters unpack, process, and – like psychoanalysis – free associate to the fundamental tensions in our lives that refuse resolution. Neither a simple critique nor defense, Inner Conflicts contends that only through acknowledging all parts of the argument within us can we fully attend to the urgencies and particularities of ethical and political life.
About the Author
Sana Sheikh is a clinical psychologist at the Cambridge Health Alliance and instructor at Harvard Medical School.
