Therapeutic Pathways Through Psychological Obstacles to Love

• By Judith Pickering

Finding true love is a journey of transformation obstructed by numerous psychological obstacles. Being in Love expands the traditional field of psychoanalytic couple therapy, and explores therapeutic methods of working through the obstacles leading to true love.

Becoming who we are is an inherently relational journey: we uncover our truest nature and become most authentically real through the difficult and fearful, yet transformative intersubjective crucibles of our intimate relationships. In this book, Judith Pickering draws comparisons betweens Bion's concept of becoming in O, and being in love. She searches for pathways that lead away from relational confusion towards the discovery of genuine transformational relationships, and works towards finding better ways of relating to one another. This is achieved by encouraging couples to enjoy the actual presence, humanity, otherness and particularity of each other rather than expecting a partner to conform to our own expectations, projections, desires and presuppositions.

Pickering draws on clinical material, contemporary psychoanalysis, cultural themes from the worlds of mythology and literature, and a wealth of therapeutic techniques in this fresh approach to couple therapy. Being in Love will therefore interest students and practitioners of psychoanalysis, psychology, and couple therapy, as well as all of those seeking to be more authentic in their relationships.

ISBN: 9780415371605

Published May 12 2008 by Routledge.

The Advent of Psychological Liberalism

• By Peter T. Dunlap

What transformation would happen if we could combine the best of liberal politics with psychology?

Awakening our Faith in the Future investigates the avenues for creating a new branch of psychology, a transformative political psychology. In the past, political psychology has focused directly on analysis and knowledge acquisition, rather than on interventions that transform self and culture. A transformative political psychology combines the best of traditional social science with the transformative intent of clinical psychology in order to create a new political culture.

Peter T. Dunlap suggests that while liberals focus intently outside of themselves on changing the world, those with psychological interests focus much more internally on changing themselves. In this book, he argues that by combining political liberalism and psychology, and encouraging psychologists to develop cultural learning practices based on ideas of self-knowledge, there is opportunity to transform our political culture.

Divided into five parts, this book explores:

• stories of political destiny
• questions of development
• opportunities for political development
• a speculative theory of cultural evolution
• practices of a political psychologist.

This scholarly text uses personal experiences and the stories of progressive political leaders as pathways for addressing political problems, making it ideal reading for professionals and students in the fields of both politics and psychology as well as for activists interested in the future of liberalism.

ISBN: 9780415445054

Published May 02 2008 by Routledge.

Emotional Experience in the Therapeutic Setting

• By Sandra Buechler

Within the title of her book, Making a Difference in Patients' Lives, Sandra Buechler echoes the hope of all clinicians. But, she counters, experience soon convinces most of us that insight, on its own, is often not powerful enough to have a significantly impact on how a life is actually lived. Many clinicians and therapists have turned toward emotional experience, within and outside the treatment setting, as a resource. How can the immense power of lived emotional experience be harnessed in the service of helping patients live richer, more satisfying lives?

Most patients come into treatment because they are too anxious, or depressed, or don’t seem to feel alive enough. Something is wrong with what they feel, or don’t feel. Given that the emotions operate as a system, with the intensity of each affecting the level of all the others, it makes sense that it would be an emotional experience that would have enough power to change what we feel. But, ironically, the wider culture, and even psychoanalysts seem to favor "solutions" that aim to mute emotionality, rather than relying on one emotion to modify another. We turn to pharmaceutical, cognitive, or behavioral change to make a difference in how life feels. Because we are afraid of emotional intensity, we cut off our most powerful source of regulation.

In clear, jargon free prose that utilizes both clinical vignettes and excerpts from poetry, art and literature, Buechler explores how the power to feel can become the power to change. Through an active empathic engagement with the patient and an awareness of the healing potential inherent in each of our fundamental emotions, the clinician can make a substantial difference in the patient’s capacity to embrace life.

ISBN: 9780881634433

Published April 24 2008 by The Analytic Press.

A Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Edited by Debbie Hindle, Graham Shulman

Adoption is an extremely complex and emotionally demanding process for all those involved. This book explores the emotional experience of adoption from a psychoanalytic perspective, and demonstrates how psychoanalytic understanding and treatment can contribute to thinking about and working with adopted children and their families.

Drawing on psychoanalytic, attachment and child development theory, and detailed in-depth clinical case discussion, The Emotional Experience of Adoption explores issues such as:

• the emotional experience of children placed for adoption, and how this both shapes and is shaped by unconscious processes in the child’s inner world
• how psychoanalytic child psychotherapy can help as a distinctive source of understanding and as a treatment for children who are either in the process of being adopted or already adopted
• how such understanding can inform planning and decision making amongst professionals and carers.

The Emotional Experience of Adoption explains and accounts for the emotional and psychological complexities involved for child, parents and professionals in adoption. It will be of interest and relevance to anyone involved at a personal level in the adoption process or professionals working in the fields of adoption, social work, child mental health, foster care and family support.

ISBN: 9780415372756

Published April 10 2008 by Routledge.

• By Joan Lachkar

Much has been written about narcissism, addressing not only its theoretical aspects, its psychodynamics and the defense mechanisms within the spectrum of various kinds of narcissists. Yet, little if anything has been written about how to actually communicate with one, or what Dr. Lachkar refers to as the “Language of Empathology.” This book focuses on specific communication styles in addressing patients with severe narcissistic personality pathology which can be extremely beneficial to mental health professionals, who are often inundated with technical terms rather than offered a practical guide on how to actually "talk" to a narcissist.

How to Talk to a Narcissist is designed to be a guide useful to both beginning and seasoned practitioners. The book is recommended to all clinicians treating individuals, couples, groups, within the scope of various narcissistic personality disorders. The book has many applications, including use as a textbook for universities, clinics, graduate courses, and analytic training institutes. People in business, partnerships, commercial sales, and human resources will also find the approach to communicating with a narcissist most valuable.

ISBN: 9780415958554

Published April 03 2008 by Routledge.

Theoretical Considerations, Research Findings, and Clinical Implications

• Edited by Fredric N. Busch

Mentalization is the capacity to perceive and interpret behavior in terms of intentional mental states, to imagine what others are thinking and feeling, and is a concept that has taken the psychological and psychoanalytic worlds by storm. This collection of papers, carefully edited by Fredric Busch, clarifies its import as an essential perspective for understanding the human psyche and interpersonal relationships. The book is divided into theoretical, research and clinical papers, reflecting how the investigators thoughtfully and purposefully pursued each of these goals. Those involved in identifying mentalization have also made consistent efforts to measure and research the concept. Thus, in addition to expanding the theoretical bases and implications of mentalization and identifying clinically useful applications, the authors describe research that scientifically grounds the concept.

Mentalization addresses and expands upon a number of implications of mentalization. These include: What are the broader implications for mentalization with regard to social and evolutionary development? How does mentalization interdigitate with other psychoanalytic models? How is mentalization systematically assessed? What clinical correlates have been found? How do we understand variations in the capacity for mentalization, even within a given individual? What are the applications of mentalization in the clinical arena, including specific disorders? Readers of this volume will find their clinical work to be more productive and their view of the human psyche broadened.

ISBN: 9780881634846

Published February 25 2008 by The Analytic Press.

Psychoanalysis and Visual Culture

• Edited by Claire Pajaczkowska, Ivan Ward

Why do human beings feel shame? What is the cultural dimension of shame and sexuality? Can theory understand the power of affect? How is psychoanalysis integral to cultural theory?

The experience of shame is a profound, painful and universal emotion with lasting effects on many aspects of public life and human culture. Rooted in childhood experience, linked to sexuality and the cultural norms which regulate the body and its pleasures, shame is uniquely human. Shame and Sexuality explores elements of shame in human psychology and the cultures of art, film, photography and textiles.

This volume is divided into two distinct sections allowing the reader to compare and contrast the psychoanalytic and the cultural writings. Part I, Psychoanalysis, provides a psychoanalytic approach to shame, using clinical examples to explore the function of unconscious fantasies, the shame shield in child sexual abuse, and the puzzling manner in which shame attaches itself to sexuality. Part II, Visual Culture, is illustrated throughout with textual analysis; contributors explore shame and sexuality in art history, politics and contemporary visual culture, including the gendering of shame, shame and abjection, and the relationship between shame and shamelessness as a strategy of resistance.

Claire Pajaczkowska and Ivan Ward bring together debates within and between the discourses of psychoanalysis and visual culture, generating new avenues of enquiry for scholars of culture, theory and psychoanalysis.

ISBN: 9780415420112

Published February 15 2008 by Routledge.

Conflicts of Self Interest between Analyst and Patient

• By Irwin Hirsch

Irwin Hirsch, author of Coasting in the Countertransference, asserts that counter-transference experience always has the potential to be used productively to benefit patients. However, he also observes that it is not unusual for analysts to 'coast' in their countertransferences, and to not use this experience to help treatment progress toward reaching patients and analysts stated analytic goals. He believes that it is quite common that analysts who have some conscious awareness of a problematic aspect of countertransference participation, or of a mutual enactment, nevertheless do nothing to change that participation and to use their awareness to move the therapy forward. Instead, analysts may prefer to maintain what has developed into perhaps a mutually comfortable equilibrium in the treatment, possibly rationalizing that the patient is not yet ready to deal with any potential disruption that a more active use of countertransference might precipitate.

This 'coasting' is emblematic of what Hirsch believes to be an ever present (and rarely addressed) conflict between analysts’ self-interest and pursuit of comfortable equilibrium, and what may be ideal for patients’ achievement of analytic aims. The acknowledgment of the power of analysts’ self-interest further highlights the contemporary view of a truly two-person psychology conception of psychoanalytic praxis. Analysts’ embrace of their selfish pursuit of comfortable equilibrium reflects both an acknowledgment of the analyst as a flawed other, and a potential willingness to abandon elements of self-interest for the greater good of the therapeutic project.

ISBN: 9780881634556

Published February 11 2008 by The Analytic Press.

The Evolution of a Method to Describe and Compare Psychoanalytic Approaches

• By David Tuckett

How do we know when what is happening between two people should be called psychoanalysis? What is a psychoanalytic process and how do we know when one is taking place?

Psychoanalysis Comparable and Incomparable describes the rationale and ongoing development of a six year programme of highly original meetings conducted by the European Psychoanalytic Federation Working Party on Comparative Clinical Methods. The project comprises over seventy cases discussed by more than five hundred experienced psychoanalysts over the course of sixty workshops.

Authored by a group of leading European psychoanalysts, this book explores ways for psychoanalysts using different approaches to learn from each other when they present their work to fellow psychoanalysts, and provides tools for the individual practitioner to examine and improve his or her own approach. As described in detail in its pages, sticking to the task led to some surprising experiences, raising fundamental questions about the way clinical discussion and supervision are conducted in psychoanalysis.

Well known by many in the psychoanalytic community and the object of much interest and debate, this project is described by those who have had the closest contact with it and will satisfy a widely held curiosity in psychoanalysts and psychotherapists throughout the world.

David Tuckett is winner of the 2007 Sigourney prize.

ISBN: 9780415451420

Published February 01 2008 by Routledge.

On the Psychology of Promising

• By Herbert J. Schlesinger

Considering that getting along in civil society is based on the expectation that (most) people will do what they say they will do, i.e., essentially live up to their explicit or implicit promises, it is amazing that so little scientific attention has been given to the act of promising. A great deal of research has been done on the moral development of children, for example, but not on the child’s ability to make and keep a promise, one of the highest moral achievements. What makes it possible developmentally, cognitively, and emotionally to make a promise in the first place? And on the other hand, what compels one to keep a promise (or vow or threat) when there seems to be no personal advantage in doing so, and even when harm can be predicted? How do we know when a promise is offered seriously to be taken at face value, and how do we understand that another is only a polite gesture, not to be taken seriously?

In Promises, Oaths, and Vows: On the Psychology of Promising, Herbert Schlesinger addresses these questions, drawing on the literature of moral development in children; the psychotherapy of a patient who regularly broke promises that were unnecessary in the first place; those who were regarded as "promising youngsters" who did not fulfill their "promise"; and those who feared making a promise, a commitment, or a threat out of fear that, once made, the utterance would take on a life of its own and could never be taken back. Furthermore, he illustrates his conclusions by examining the widespread use of promising in classical literature, such as Greek drama and the plays of Shakespeare, as well as the motivating and reifying power of the promise in Western religious traditions.

With a style honed over the penning of two previous books, Schlesinger once again produces a work grounded in a firm analytic sensibility, but which also retains the wit and candor of the seasoned analyst. His seminal investigation of this all but neglected topic in the clinical literature is as timely as it is scholarly, and – with the title firmly in mind – Promises, Oaths, and Vows is assured to be a worthy addition to any clinician’s library and a provoking investigation into Nietzsche’s notion of man as "the animal who makes promises."

ISBN: 9780881634549

Published January 23 2008 by The Analytic Press.