Book Announcement by Donnel B. Stern (USA) and Irwin Hirsch (USA)
North American psychoanalysis has long been deeply influenced and substantially changed by clinical and theoretical perspectives first introduced by interpersonal psychoanalysis. Yet even today, despite originating in the 1930s, many otherwise well-read psychoanalysts and psychotherapists are not well informed about the field. The Interpersonal Perspective in Psychoanalysis, 1960s to 1990s: Rethinking Transference and Countertransference (Routledge, 2017) provides a superb starting point for those who are not as familiar with interpersonal psychoanalysis as they might be. For those who already know the literature, it will be useful in placing a selection of classic interpersonal articles and their writers in key historical context.
During the time span covered in this book, interpersonal psychoanalysis was most concerned with revising the understanding of the analytic relationship – transference and countertransference – and how to work with it. Most of the works collected here center on this theme. The interpersonal perspective introduced the view that the analyst is always and unavoidably a particular, “real” person, and that transference and countertransference need to be reconceptualized to take the analyst’s individual humanity into account.
Donnel B. Stern and Irwin Hirsch, the editors of this volume, present each piece with a prologue, offering a brief overview that contextualizes each author and his or her work in the interpersonal literature. An introductory essay also reviews the history of interpersonal psychoanalysis, explaining why interpersonal thinking remains a coherent clinical and theoretical perspective in contemporary psychoanalysis. The Interpersonal Perspective in Psychoanalysis, 1960s–1990s: Rethinking Transference and Countertransference will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists wanting to know more about interpersonal theory and practice than can be learned from current sources.
About the Editors:
Donnel B. Stern, PhD, Training and Supervising Analyst, William Alanson White Institute, New York City; Adjunct Clinical Professor, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; author of Unformulated Experience: From Dissociation to imagination in Psychoanalysis (1997); Partners in Thought: Working with Unformulated Experience, Dissociation, and Enactment (2010); and Relational Freedom: Emergent Properties of the Interpersonal Field (2015).
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Irwin Hirsch, PhD, supervises and/or teaches at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis, the William Alanson White Institute, the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, National Program. He has authored over 80 journal articles and book chapters and two books: Coasting in the Countertransference: Conflicts of Self-Interest between Analyst and Patient (2008), winner of the Goethe Award; and The Interpersonal Tradition: The Origins of Psychoanalytic Subjectivity (2015).
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