From the Editors

Maria Tammone (Italy)

Christina Emanuel (USA)

Dear IARPP Bookshelf Readers,

Welcome to the IARPP Bookshelf section of the eNews. The Bookshelf celebrates the creative contributions that IARPP writers, researchers, and thinkers are making to the field of relational psychoanalysis. In this edition we also feature in depth interviews with two authors, Phil Ringstrom and Paul Wachtel, discussing their recent books.

As the new co-editors of the Bookshelf and eNews, we would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank our two outgoing editors, Sally Rudoy (USA) and Sharon Ziv Beiman (Israel), for their outstanding work and leadership. Sally and Sharon have been the co-editors of the eNews and Bookshelf for several years. They have generously shown us the ropes, preparing us now to take on this challenge ourselves. Thank you, Sally and Sharon! We would also like to acknowledge the unflagging support and assistance of Valerie Ghent and Elisa Zazzera, our IARPP administrators. They’re the ones who make the Bookshelf and eNews look great, putting in much behind the scenes work in creating these publications.

We hope you enjoy this edition of the Bookshelf. Our next deadline for submissions will be January 23, 2015.  Please read below for instructions to submit pieces for future editions of the Bookshelf and eNews.

Sincerely,

Christina and Maria

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3 Books by Sebastián León

Psicoterapia Psicoanalítica: Una Ética Terapéutica Más Allá de la Técnica
(Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Therapy Ethic Beyond the Technique)

Problemas Actuales en Psicoanálisis Infanto-Juvenil
(Current Problems in Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis)

El Lugar del Padre en Psicoanálisis: Freud, Lacan, Winnicott
(The Place of the Father in Psychoanalysis: Freud, Lacan, Winnicott)

En este libro -resultado de diez años de estudios, investigaciones y publicaciones, situados entre 1997 y 2006- Sebastián León propone una concepción del psicoanálisis edificada sobre las bases de una filosofía existencial y de una epistemología crítica del positivismo cientificista. Plantea una clínica psicoanalítica que no depende de parámetros técnicos (frecuencia de sesiones, utilización del diván, uso sistemático de herramientas interpretativas, etc.), sino de una ética terapéutica más allá de la técnica: una actitud de cuidado hacia el padecer singular del paciente, fundada en una escucha abierta de lo inconciente. Estas propuestas cobran especial relevancia en una época en la cual somos testigos de cómo el progreso técnico suele ir acompañado de postergación de la subjetividad y de malestar social.

El psicoanálisis es psicoterapia psicoanalítica: esto significa que no podemos reducir la práctica del psicoanálisis a una técnica adaptativa, olvidándonos que allí está en juego lo inconciente; pero tampoco podríamos concebirla como una mero método de investigación del inconciente, despreocupado tanto del sufrimiento concreto del paciente como del vínculo real y presente con el terapeuta o analista. El psicoanálisis, concebido como psicoterapia psicoanalítica, aparece como una relación interpersonal de genuina preocupación y cuidado hacia la persona del paciente, en la cual se vuelve posible (si el terapeuta no se refugia en la intelectualidad de la teoría ni en una técnica impersonal) lo que ya anunciaba la propia etimología de la voz «psicoanálisis»: la desatadura del psiquismo y el consecuente alivio del sufrimiento humano.

El presente libro desarrolla y profundiza la distinción entre una actitud técnica y una posición ética en la psicoterapia psicoanalítica, recorriendo las implicancias de una ética terapéutica más allá de la técnica en diversos niveles: una lectura novedosa de los fundamentos filosóficos del psicoanálisis, una revisión de los aportes de diversos autores psicoanalíticos clásicos y contemporáneos, un estudio de la psicopatología y de la práctica clínica, y un análisis crítico del lugar del psicoanálisis en la historia política y en la institución universitaria. A partir de estos análisis, el autor propone un psicoanálisis que se asume no sólo como una ética terapéutica más allá de la técnica, sino que también como una práctica crítica y políticamente implicada, muy distinta del mito cientificista de un método neutral.

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Therapy Ethic Beyond the Technique

In this book, the result of ten years of research and study between 1997 and 2006, Sebastián León proposes a conception of psychoanalysis built on an existential philosophy and an epistemology critical of scientistic positivism. It outlines a psychoanalytic practice that doesn’t depend on technical parameters (session frequency, use of the couch, systematic use of interpretative tools, etc.) but instead depends on a therapeutic ethic beyond the technique.

As practitioners of psychoanalytic psychotherapy we cannot reduce our work to adaptive technique, forgetting that the unconscious is there. But neither should we conceive of psychoanalysis as a simple unconscious research method, one that ignores the patient’s concrete suffering and the real and present bond between the patient and analyst/therapist. As an interpersonal relationship of genuine concern and care for the patient, psychoanalysis makes possible—if the therapist does not take refuge in the intellectual side of theory or view psychoanalysis as an impersonal art—what is suggested by the etymology of the word “psychoanalysis”: analyzing the psyche and the consequent relief of human suffering.

This book develops and deepens the distinction between a technical attitude and an ethical position in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The author gives a novel reading of the philosophical foundations of psychoanalysis, reviewing the contributions of various classical and contemporary psychoanalytic writers. León discusses psychopathology and clinical practice, and gives a critical analysis of the place of psychoanalysis in political history and the university. From these analyses, the author demonstrates a therapeutic ethic beyond technique in psychoanalysis, as well as as a critical and politically involved practice that is very different from the scientistic myth of neutrality.

Link: http://www.rileditores.com/index/detalle.asp?27/706

•••

Problemas Actuales en Psicoanálisis Infanto-Juvenil

En este libro, Sebastián León parte de la premisa de que niños y adolescentes no son individuos aislados, ni tampoco entes pasivos que reciben y absorben como esponjas los estímulos del medio. Niños y adolescentes –sostiene el autor- son sujetos activos, creativos y críticos, que ocupan un lugar particular en el contexto y en la trama histórica de una familia y de una sociedad.

En una época dominada por el afán de medir, medicar y producir, el principal problema actual en el trabajo psicoanalítico con niños y adolescentes es evitar reproducir una lógica de trabajo que ubica al niño y al adolescente en el lugar de objetos de evaluación, así como sortear las presiones sociales e institucionales que empujan a trabajar en pos de su domesticación adaptativa y ajuste social. Frente a esto, el presente libro toma partido por un psicoanálisis que -tanto en la clínica como en la cultura- opera como herramienta crítica y no como un instrumento de acatamiento. Lo que interesa –señala Sebastián León- es una práctica clínica fundada en la escucha liberadora de cada niño y adolescente, comprendidos como sujetos históricos, creativos y singulares. Esta labor supone el trabajo con y no contra sus padres o cuidadores, al mismo tiempo que el diálogo lúcido con instituciones escolares y profesionales de otras disciplinas.

La segunda parte de este libro aporta un detallado y emotivo historial clínico, que ejemplifica cómo el proceso psicoterapéutico tiene por finalidad facilitar el advenimiento del niño como sujeto, en un proceso de desidentificación gradual respecto de su posición de objeto.

Current Problems in Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis

In this book, Sebastián León starts from the premise that children and adolescents are neither isolated individuals nor passive entities like sponges, absorbing environmental stimuli. Children and adolescents, according to the author, are active, creative and critical subjects, with a special place in the context, history, and fabric of a family and a society.

In an era dominated by the desire to measure, medicate, and produce, the central problem in psychoanalytic work with children and adolescents is to avoid viewing them as objects of evaluation, pushed by social and institutional pressure toward adaptive training and social adjustment. Against this, this book views psychoanalysis, both in the clinic and the culture, not as a tool of compliance. What matters, according to León, is a clinical practice based on liberation, listening to every child and teenager, understanding them as historical, creative, and unique subjects. This involves working with and not against their parents or caregivers, in dialogue with educational institutions and professionals from other disciplines.

•••

El Lugar del Padre en Psicoanálisis: Freud, Lacan, Winnicott

El lugar del padre, mucho más que una estructura universal, ahistórica e inamovible, es una construcción cultural, histórica y susceptible de permanentes variaciones. En efecto, las actuales transformaciones socioculturales en torno al lugar, la función y el rol del padre en la familia y en la sociedad, muestran una creciente declinación de la hegemonía del modelo patriarcal tradicional y una apertura hacia nuevas y múltiples construcciones de la paternidad tanto a nivel mundial como nacional.

A su vez, el complejo paterno es un problema fundamental y de vastas implicancias al interior del campo psicoanalítico. Esta temática atraviesa las áreas de la metapsicología, la psicopatología, la práctica clínica y también los análisis en torno a la cultura y la religión.

En este nuevo libro –resultado de la tesis doctoral con la que el autor recibió el título de Doctor en Psicología por la Universidad de Chile- Sebastián León analiza en profundidad las contribuciones, convergencias y divergencias entre Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan y Donald Winnicott –acaso las tres figuras más relevantes en la historia del psicoanálisis- en torno a la problemática del lugar del padre, a la luz del concepto de complejo paterno y en el marco de las actuales transformaciones socioculturales de la paternidad.

En relación al complejo paterno, el autor destaca tres convergencias fundamentales entre Freud, Lacan y Winnicott: 1) la consideración del complejo paterno como un núcleo fundante tanto del psiquismo individual como de la organización cultural; 2) la formulación del complejo paterno principalmente en términos funcionales, esto es, enfatizando la función de prohibición del incesto; y 3) la proposición de un giro teórico en sus últimos desarrollos teóricos, tendiente a una deconstrucción, un descentramiento y una pluralización del complejo paterno, más allá de la dimensión funcional de la prohibición del incesto.

El presente libro demuestra que las concepciones del lugar del padre en las obras de Freud, Lacan y Winnicott, contemplan variaciones consistentes e incluso anticipadoras de los profundos cambios socioculturales en el ejercicio de la paternidad en las últimas décadas

The Place of the Father in Psychoanalysis: Freud, Lacan, Winnicott

The place of the father, much more than universal, ahistorical, and unchanging, is a construction that is cultural, historical, and susceptible to change. Indeed, there are significant current sociocultural changes occurring surrounding the place, function, and role of the father in the family and society. These cultural shifts reveal a growing decline in traditional patriarchal hegemony, as well as an openness to new and multiple constructions of fatherhood both globally and nationally.

The father complex is a fundamental problem with vast implications within the psychoanalytic field. This theme runs through the areas of metapsychology, psychopathology, clinical practice, as well as the analysis of culture and religion. This new book is the result of the thesis for which the author received a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Chile. In it, Sebastián León analyzes in depth the contributions, convergences, and differences of Sigmund Freud, Donald Winnicott, and Jacques Lacan, perhaps the three most important figures in the history of psychoanalysis, on the issue of the place of the father. León analyzes the concept of fatherhood and the father complex in the context of current sociocultural transformations of parenthood.

Regarding the father complex, the author highlights three fundamental convergences between Freud, Lacan and Winnicott: 1) consideration of the father complex as a fundamental core of both the individual psyche and the organization of culture; 2) the formulation of the father complex primarily in functional terms, this is, emphasizing the role of incest prohibition; and 3) proposing a theoretical shift surrounding the father complex, viewing it as more than just the prohibition of incest.

This book discusses the place of the father in the works of Freud, Lacan, and Winnicott, considering the profound cultural changes in parenting practices in recent decades.

Link to publisher: http://www.rileditores.com/index/detalle.asp?27/704

Sebastián León, PhD
Doctor en Psicología U. de Chile – Psicólogo Clínico U. Católica
Especialista y Supervisor Acreditado en Psicoterapia (CNAPC)
www.sebastianleon.cl

Psychoanalysis and Complexity

Gabriele Lenti (Italy)

Gabriele Lenti’s new book is a rich and articulate discussion of the controversial relationship between the cognitive method of the human sciences and the method related to the natural sciences. Psychoanalysis has always been out of step with science in the epistemological field and constantly is in search of an organic relationship to it. Complexity means something different to psychoanalysts and to those studying the natural sciences, though it provides a common key to understanding processes present in both fields. The book is written for psychoanalysts, researchers in the field of psychology and psychoanalysis, science philosophers, and epistemologists.

Link: https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=49990

Please note a 20% discount on all orders of this book. If you would like to take advantage of this offer, please email the publisher at billing.central@novapublishers.com, entering liborg20 in the subject line of the email.

Gabriele Lenti was born in Alessandria, Italy, in 1963. He lives and works in Genova. He is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and researcher, as well as a member of SIPRe (Società Italiana Psicoanalisi della Relazione), IFPS (International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies), and IARPP (The International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy).

He is the author of numerous publications on professional journals and has written three books in Italian :

• Al di là del principio di entropia. Alcune considerazioni su psicoanalisi e complessità, (Beyond the principle of entropy. Some Considerations about Psychoanalysis and Complexity), Armando, Roma, 2005.

• Gli incerti percorsi della conoscenza, Redancia, (The uncertain paths of knowledge), collected works, Savona, 2007.

• Complessità per una psicoanalisi futura, (Complexity for a future psychoanalysis), which is going to be published by Armando Roma.

Lenti has given dozens of scientific lectures on psychology, psychoanalysis, and complexity at several universities, Italian psychoanalytic centers, and international congresses. He presented a paper to the IFPS International Congress in Mexico City (October, 2012), given video-conferences in Tehran (October 2013-February 2014) at the Tehran Psychoanalytic Society, and has given a lecture at the IFPS International Forum in Kaunas (September 2014).

Dott. Gabriele Lenti
Via Chiaramone 12 16158 Genova Italy
www.gabrielelenti.it
email Gabriele Lenti

Interview with Paul Wachtel about his New Book: Cyclical Psychodynamics and the Contextual Self: The Inner World, the Intimate World, and the World of Culture and Society

Interview by Sharon Ziv Beiman

In his new book Paul Wachtel offers the reader an updated, comprehensive, and highly illuminating version of his groundbreaking relational‑integrative theory, Cyclical Psychodynamics (1977, 1987, 1997, 2008, 2011). Wachtel reviews and renews the core ideas his theory suggests. According to Wachtel’s Cyclical Psychodynamic theory, the psychodynamic infrastructure, the behavioral world, and the social and relational world cyclically and reciprocally influence each other. He argues that the experiential world we live in is created jointly by the way our psychodynamic infrastructure shapes our perceptions and actions in the world and by the responses from others that those actions evoke. Therefore, interventions on each of these dimensions—psychodynamic interpretative work, behavioral environmental change, or new experiences in the relational world—have the potential to cyclically influence other dimensions as well. Psychotherapeutic integration, according to this theory, means combining the work on insight and action, while mapping the cyclical and reciprocal influences among the different dimensions, trying to promote change in the most accessible channel, and detecting its cyclical influence on other channels as well.

Sharon Ziv Beiman: Paul, I would like to share with you that reading your book deepened the formative influence of your theoretical ideas on my clinical theory and practice. In addition, I experienced your writing as offering an outstanding demonstration of your intellectual challenging of the binaries between depth and action and between depth and clarity.

First, I would like to ask you what are the major developments in your theory “Cyclical Psychodynamics” that the new book delivers?

Paul Wachtel: Let me begin with expressing my gratitude both for your kind comments and for doing this interview.

Regarding what is new in the book, perhaps the most important thing is that it is the first book I have written that places cyclical psychodynamic theory so front and center. The theory described in the book has been at the heart of my thinking for many years, but it was usually the background context for my discussions of topics such as integrating other modalities into psychoanalysis, how to formulate our comments to patients so that they are genuinely therapeutic instead of subtly undermining or threatening, and the reexamination of the relational paradigm and its implications for therapeutic practice. Here, however, cyclical psychodynamic theory is not the background but the foreground.

The book also aims to further elaborate and explore a range of issues that I have discussed before but in venues that were not usually familiar to analysts. Thus it elaborates on the concept of “accomplices” in maintaining problematic patterns in living. This is a concept that has been at the heart of my work for many years and that, I believe, is a crucial one for relational psychoanalytic thinking, but the explicit concept of “accomplices” has not been part of the psychoanalytic vocabulary thus far.

The book explores as well other ideas and issues that had not been examined as fully in my earlier books. Examples include a perspective on the relation between repression and dissociation, offering new ways of thinking about both and about the unconscious; a cyclical psychodynamic perspective on attachment highlighting the differences between one-person and two-person approaches to conceptualizing what attachment is, as well as what its implications are for theory and practice; a reexamination of the ways the metaphor of depth is employed in psychoanalytic discourse, and the potential confusions it can introduce; and further elaboration of the relation between what is usually called the inner world and the outer world. I also include a number of case studies that I hope further our understanding of the range of potentials inherent in the psychoanalytic point of view. These cases demonstrate that opening ourselves to thinking integratively in our practice enables us to carry our psychoanalytic aims further than if we limit our applications of psychoanalytic thought strictly to what we have called “psychoanalysis.” In fact, the book even contains a chapter that raises the question of whether psychoanalytic training should be understood as training to be a psychoanalyst.

The term “relational” is connected for many of us to concepts such as “multiple self,” “mutual recognition,” “self states,” “co‑construction,” “enactments,” “thirdness,” “intersubjective space,” “culture in mind,” “intersubjective negotiation,” and “witnessing,” to mention just a few. My impression is that you use the term “relational” with different emphases or connotations. Can you reflect on this observation?

I am very interested in, and address in some way, almost all of the concepts you just named. But you are right that I often view them in a somewhat different way and offer a version of relational theory that has a different tone, style, and conception of where the boundaries around relational thinking should be drawn.

The cyclical psychodynamic version of relational thought evolved out of an effort to integrate psychoanalytic ideas and practices with those of other therapeutic approaches, and so it is a more open-systems understanding of both psychoanalysis and its evolving relational tradition. Most relational formulations originated out of a more limited (though certainly very fertile and important) integrative aim, to integrate interpersonal, object relations, and self psychology perspectives, although it did later integrate more broadly, including perspectives from feminist thought, dynamic systems theory, attachment theory, and other points of view.

I still recall vividly conversations I had with Steve Mitchell in which Steve expressed sympathy for the aim of integrating ideas and methods from other therapeutic perspectives outside of psychoanalysis, but said it was a sufficient challenge to aim for integration within the realm of psychoanalytic views. I certainly resonate with that acknowledgment of the finiteness of all of us, but feel that relational thinking is enriched by going outside as well. There is a lot in the world of cognitive behavioral practice that I feel quite critical about, and I have actually written quite explicit critiques of a number of features of CBT, but I also think that to just thoroughly ignore what is now the point of view of the large majority of therapists in the world is a mistake. We have much to object to in what they do, but we also have things to learn. Steve, as a pioneer, understandably had to limit his scope of attention in order to accomplish what he did, but I wish that more contemporary relationalists, building on the foundation that Steve and other early pioneers created, were turning their attention outward to see what we could learn from therapists whose views and vocabularies are quite different from ours.

It is interesting to note, in this regard, that for several years Steve was on the advisory board of SEPI, the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration. Eventually, he conveyed to me that he needed to narrow his focus to pursue his within-psychoanalysis integrative efforts, but I like to think that, having accomplished so much of his ambitious agenda by the time of his death, he would have rejoined SEPI had his life not been so tragically cut short.

Just to add one other dimension to my response to your important question, in an earlier book, Relational Theory and the Practice of Psychotherapy, I discussed in great detail what I call “the default position,” a set of unexamined assumptions about psychoanalytic practice inherited from the early and middle years of psychoanalytic history. I examined there the ways in which relational practice can often unwittingly continue to incorporate “default position” restrictions and, relatedly, how the two-person emphasis in relational epistemology is often not accompanied by a fully two-person perspective in many relational accounts of personality dynamics and development. The cyclical psychodynamic version of relational thought aims to be more thoroughly two-person in its perspective.

Your theory has always related to the interaction between the psychodynamic inner infrastructure, the relational world, and the behavioral world. In the current book you emphasize the “contextual self.” Can you share with us what led you to conceptualize and emphasize the “contextual self” and how this concept differs from your earlier perception of the “relational self”?

I just referred to being more thoroughly two-person, and now I need immediately to challenge myself. One hallmark of the cyclical psychodynamic point of view is an effort to go beyond “two-person” thinking to arrive at a more thoroughly contextual point of view. I still use the language of one-person and two-person, because it is a part of our discourse, and clarifies certain distinctions. But it can obscure other issues. The highlighting of the concept of “two-person” psychology largely originates in the circumstances in which most psychoanalysts do their thinking and observing—two people in a room. But family therapists or group therapists work with more than two people in the room, and, more importantly, we all live in a variety of contexts that include not just more than two people but other sources of influence altogether. Part of the aim of this new book is to bring together ideas deriving from the clinical situation and ideas that address the larger realm of society (hence the long subtitle of the book). Issues of race, culture, ethnicity, economic deprivation, and inequality of opportunity—these are not just “superficial” add-ons to a “deeper” and more fundamental intrapsychic wellspring. The inner world, the intimate world (that is, the world of direct interaction with one or several people in immediate contact and exchange) and the world of culture and society are not really separate realms. They are thorough and reciprocally interwoven to the degree that we do not understand any of them without a good deal of understanding of the others. Indeed, it is only the linear constraints of our language that even render one element of this interwoven whole as separate or “other.”

The concept of the contextual self is an effort to come to grips with this reality of human life and existence. The idea of the contextual self is a way of highlighting that yes, we all do have personality structures, even (though we must be careful of the metaphor, as I noted earlier) deep-seated personality structures. But they are also contextual structures. What is characteristic of each of us is our distinct way of experiencing and responding to different situations or relational contexts. We each make sense of and respond to the circumstances we encounter in our unique, individual fashion. (I should add here that the situations we encounter are not just externally or randomly determined; the dialectic between finding ourselves in situations determined by others and creating the situations we find ourselves in through the way we have related to and perceived the other is a central emphasis of cyclical psychodynamic thought.) But at the same time, each of us is different in different situations. That is what makes the structures of our personality contextual structures. The concept is related to the more familiar relational concept of multiple self states, but it highlights the degree to which those different self states are manifested in relational to different contexts.

What is your perception of the interaction among active interventions, psychic structure, and the analysis of transference?

For many years, analysts were cautioned against any kinds of active interventions because they would “muddy” the transference. This is a key part of what I referred to as the default position (even though most relationalists do challenge this particular manifestation of it). The assumption essentially was that there was one “true” transference. Attention to the contextual nature of the self highlights that there are many transferences. We react transferentially with a different aspect of our complex personality structure depending on what is called forth from the interactive field. This is the core of the two-person point of view. The analyst can’t not be there, can’t factor herself out. She must take into account her impact on the transference facet she elicits. If she acts in a neutral, non-interventive fashion (at least overtly non-interventive, because again it is impossible not to intervene), she calls forth one face of the potential range of transferential reactions. If she is more overtly and manifestly offering advice, guidance, caring, whatever, she will call forth another. No matter what, she will elicit only a portion of the potential range of transferential reactions and experiences, and no matter what, that portion will be a real, if partial, expression of who the person is.

What is your main thesis regarding the issue of psychological and psychoanalytic depth?

I do use the term depth in my writing, just as almost all analysts do, but I use it more self-consciously and with some awareness of irony and limitations. It is an evocative metaphor. The problem is that “deep” is often confused with “early.” One can talk about material related to the patient’s earliest years in a very superficial fashion and one can talk about the struggles and conflicts being manifested in the present in a very deep way. Deep has more to do with how significant something is, how complexly and importantly it is intertwined with the range of issues and experiences the person struggles with, and how hard it is to promote conscious awareness of the desire or experience. Used this way, I have no problem with the concept of depth. But in the chapter on depth in the new book, I try to highlight how often it ends up being confused with “early,” how it is often intertwined with the archaeological metaphor that so much of Freud’s theorizing employed, and where and when it leads us astray.

How do you evaluate the contribution of the relational approach to the development of the movement of psychotherapy integration, and what is your estimation of the potential collaboration between the these two emerging and promising movements in the world of psychotherapy?

Relational psychoanalysis is, in my view, the version of psychoanalysis that best lends itself to incorporating the insights and methods of therapeutic approaches outside of psychoanalysis, thereby expanding and strengthening psychoanalysis itself. (I of course include in this the particular version of relational theorizing that is cyclical psychodynamics, which was originally developed for precisely this purpose.) As I mentioned earlier, I think this potential in relational theory has not been sufficiently exercised so far, but there are increasing trends in this direction. An important book edited by Jill Bresler and Karen Starr on relational psychoanalysis and psychotherapy integration will be coming out at the end of this year, and I think it may help to accelerate the integrative trend that it represents in its very occurrence.

As innovator in field of psychotherapy, what are the next ideas you are working on?

First, thank you for describing my work that way. My aim is to view developments in a range of fields with both skepticism and respect and to see where they fit and, especially, where one provides a strength in the very place where the other is weak.

I have two projects in mind at the moment. One is a reexamination of the concept of evidence-based practice which has had such growing influence in recent years. I think one of the things I am good at is looking at where rhetoric and unexamined ideological assumptions are confused with science or with careful analysis. I think this has happened a lot with the idea of evidence-based practice. I am someone who does think it is incumbent upon us to provide more evidence for the value of what we do. I don’t dismiss that as simply the imposition of a dehumanized technical rationality.

But at the same time, the state of the discourse on evidence-based practice right now is egregious. It is steeped in unexamined (and, I think, often wrong) assumptions, most of them rooted in a melding of one form (the “bad” kind, not the only kind) of cognitive-behavioral thinking and the ideology and economic interests of large corporations. It is dismissive of psychoanalysis and totally misunderstands and misrepresents what psychoanalysis is and, indeed, the vast evidence—of a wide variety of sorts—for its value. It perpetrates a narrow, pinched, and ultimately unscientific view of data. I say unscientific because it is largely rooted in throwing out observations it doesn’t like, like huge numbers of process-outcome studies illuminating what yields change in more naturalistic therapeutic settings (for example, clinics and practitioners who treat people rather than diagnoses). Even its fetish with randomized controlled trials (in no way a “gold standard” when the fundamental requirement of a double blind methodology used in drug studies is not—and cannot be—employed) stops at the shores of findings it does not like. Randomized controlled trials that clearly indicate (within the limits of any single methodology) the value of psychodynamic treatments are dismissed, thrown out, if the therapy wasn’t manualized or if, God forbid, the patients did not all have the same DSM diagnosis. This isn’t science; it’s a travesty of science, and I am planning to write about it in some depth.

The second major project I have in mind is related to Part II of the book, the extension of psychoanalytic understanding into the realms of race, class, and culture. I am especially concerned about two things in the contemporary world, growing inequality and climate change. I would like to probe the roots of these phenomena, which reflect the intersection of psychology, psychoanalysis, economics, sociology, and politics. Not a small project! So I will have to see how to pace myself and what it is realistic to expect.

Since I’m someone who loves to spend time with my family and friends, has a compulsion to see all the interesting new movies, and is utterly preoccupied with the Brooklyn Nets NBA basketball team (no analysis please!), this will obviously be a major juggling effort. But even though I am physically a klutz, I do have some experience in this kind of juggling, so I am optimistic I can accomplish at least part of what I have in mind.

The books of Paul Wachtel:

Wachtel, P. L. (1977). Psychoanalysis and behavior therapy: Toward an integration. New York: Basic Books.
German translation, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981.
Paperback edition, Basic Books, 1989.

Wachtel, P. L. (Ed.) (1982). Resistance: Psychodynamic and behavioral approaches. New York: Plenum.

Wachtel, P. L. (1983). The poverty of affluence: A psychological portrait of the American way of life. New York: Free Press.
Japanese translation, Tokyo: Brittania Books, 1985.
Spanish translation, Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economico, 1989.
Paperback edition, Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1989.

Wachtel, E. F. and Wachtel, P. L. (1986). Family dynamics in individual psychotherapy. New York: Guilford.
Paperback edition, Guilford, 1991.

Wachtel, P. L. (1987). Action and insight. New York: Guilford.

Freedheim, D., Freudenberger, H., Kessler, J., Messer, S., Peterson, D., Strupp, H., & Wachtel, P. (Eds.) (1992). History of psychotherapy: A century of change. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Wachtel, P. L. (1993). Therapeutic communication: Principles and effective practice. New York:Guilford.
Spanish translation, Bilbao, Spain: Desclee de Brouwer, 1996.
Paperback edition, New York: Guilford, 1998.
Italian translation, Torino, Italy: Bollati Boringhieri, 2000.
Japanese translation, Tokyo: Kongo-Shuppan, 2004.
Greek translation, Athens: Savalas, 2005.
Farsi translation. Tehran: University of Tehran Press, 2010.
Wachtel, P. L. (1997). Psychoanalysis, behavior therapy, and the relational world. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Japanese translation, Tokyo: Kongo-Shuppan, 2002.
Farsi translation, Tehran: Arjmand Publications. 2011.

Wachtel, P. L. and Messer, S. M. (Eds.) (1997). Theories of psychotherapy: Issues and prospects. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Wachtel, P. L. (1999). Race in the mind of America: Breaking the vicious circle between blacks and whites. New York: Routledge.

Wachtel, P. L. (2008). Relational theory and the practice of psychotherapy. New York:
Guilford.
Paperback edition, 2010
Turkish translation, 2011. Istanbul: Litera Publishers.
Polish translation, 2014. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Harmonia
Japanese translation in preparation

Wachtel, P. L. (2011). Inside the session: What really happens in psychotherapy? Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Japanese translation in preparation

Wachtel, P. L. (2011). Therapeutic communication: Knowing what to say when. Second Edition. New York: Guilford.
Polish translation, Krakow: Jagiellonian University Press, 2012
Paperback edition, 2013
Japanese translation, 2014, Tokyo: Kongo Shuppan

Wachtel, P. L. (2014). Cyclical psychodynamics and the contextual self: The inner world, the intimate world, and the world of culture and society. New York: Routledge.

Link: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415713955/

Note: 20% discount when ordering online and using code IRK71

Paul L. Wachtel, Ph.D. is Distinguished Professor of psychology in the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership and in the doctoral program in clinical psychology at City College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He did his undergraduate studies at Columbia and received his doctorate in clinical psychology at Yale. He was a cofounder of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI) and is a past president of that organization. Among his books are The Poverty of Affluence (1983); Family Dynamics in Individual Psychotherapy (with Ellen F. Wachtel) (1986); Action and Insight (1987); Psychoanalysis, Behavior Therapy, and the Relational World (1997); and Race in the Mind of America: Breaking the Vicious Circles Between Blacks and Whites (1999). His most recent books are Relational Theory and the Practice of Psychotherapy (2008), Inside the Session: What Really Happens in Psychotherapy (2011) the second edition of Therapeutic Communication (2011), and Cyclical Psychodynamics and the Contextual Self: The Inner World, the Intimate World, and the World of Culture and Society (2014). He is a Fellow of Divisions 12, 29, and 39 of the American Psychological Association and was the winner of the 2010 Hans H. Strupp Award for Psychoanalytic Writing, Teaching, and Research, the 2012 Distinguished Psychologist Award by Division 29 (Psychotherapy) of APA and the 2013 Scholarship and Research Award by Division 39 (Psychoanalysis) of APA.

Paul L. Wachtel, Ph.D.
CUNY Distinguished Professor
Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology
City College of New York
New York, NY 10031
email Paul Wachtel

Sharon Ziv Beiman, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, the chair of the Israeli Forum for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (the Israeli chapter of IARPP), the co-manager of Siach-Group (an Institute for Relational Psychotherapy Tel Aviv), on faculty at the College for Academic Studies Or Yehuda, and in private practice Tel Aviv.
email Sharon Ziv Beiman

Book Chapters

Dianne Elise
Mary Lynne Ellis
Ruth Litjmaer

Saying Goodbye:
Traumatic Reverberations in the Subjective Sense of Time

Book Chapter by Dianne Elise (USA)

Chapter in Robin Deustch (Ed.) Traumatic Ruptures: Abandonment and Betrayal in the Analytic Relationship. London: Routledge, 2014.

This chapter addresses the painful circumstance of the analyst’s death in the midst of an analysis. That loss may be the literal death of the analyst or the symbolic death brought about by an ethical violation. One way or another, the trusted, “good” analyst has “disappeared.” This rupture has profound implications for the analysand’s subjective experience of time and for termination. With a full termination phase foreclosed, something must be done about time. The effort of mourning takes time and requires personal creation. Through extended night and day dreaming, one crafts a lamentation to what has been lost. An elegy, Ogden (2000) writes, “must capture in its own voice, not the voice that has been lost, but a voice brought to life in the experiencing of that loss…there can be a sense that the new voice has somehow been there all along in the old ones, as a child is somehow an imminence in his ancestors and is brought to life both through their lives and through their deaths” (p. 86-87). This chapter is about the creative use of time inherent in the capacity to dream and to imagine that induces ghosts to become ancestors.

Link: http://books.google.com/books=Dianne+Elise

email Dianne Elise

Violations of Human Rights: Trauma and Social Trauma – Can We Forgive

Book Chapter by Ruth Lijtmaer (USA)

Ruth Lijtmaer, PhD, wrote “Violations of Human Rights: Trauma and Social Trauma – Can We Forgive?” Psychoanalytic Theory: Perspectives, Techniques and Social Implications. Series: Psychology Research Progress. Chapter 4, p. 57-71, 2014. Phillip Fenton (Ed). ISBN: 978-1-63321-312-8.

Link: https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=50351&osCsid=4717994edfba5c9c95cc78180c4c328d

Interview with Phil Ringstrom about his New Book: A Relational Psychoanalytic Approach to Couples Psychotherapy

Interview by Christina Emanuel

Christina Emanuel: Thank you, Phil, for participating in this interview for the IARPP Bookshelf. And congratulations on the publication of your new book!

Phil Ringstrom: Thank you and everyone at the IARPP Bookshelf for giving me this opportunity.

Could you share a bit about how you became interested in writing about psychoanalysis and couples therapy?

In the mid 1970s I was completing my MSW at the University of Kansas, including my intern training at the Menninger Foundation. The psychoanalysis of that period as practiced at Menninger left me cold. What warmed me up was immersing myself in all the ways systems theory, particularly family and couples systems theories, was pointing out the inextricable relationality of human nature in both the intrapsychic and the interpersonal domains. That interest followed me in the ensuing decades when I discovered intersubjective systems theory and relational psychoanalysis. So it became kind of a life’s work to write this book and to tie together four decades of thinking, teaching, writing, and practice.

Your book is 290 pages long, densely packed with theory and lively clinical examples. What do you hope the reader will take away as the most important message of this book?

You know I never really thought about that until after I had finished writing the book. However, since completing it I realize that for psychoanalytic practitioners I think the kind of couples psychotherapy I am advocating may very well be the best modality for introducing new patients to psychodynamic psychotherapy. In many cases it may be far better than individual psychotherapy, at least initially, for patients who have little or no familiarity with psychoanalysis. This is because it can be very trying to help non-psychoanalytically aware patients develop a sense of transference and curiosity about the things that psychoanalysis can foment in their lives.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Say I am five minutes late to a session. I bring my patient into my consulting room and I may, in a very psychoanalytically curious manner, say something like, “I am aware that I was five minutes late today. I am wondering if you might have some thoughts or feelings or even fantasies about that?” In my forty years of experience I found that the non-analytically oriented patient will usually look at me like I am crazy. He might say something like, “Geez, Doc, what’s the big deal?!? Anybody can be five minutes late! You guys will try to make something out of anything!” The idea that there is anything to be made about my being five minutes late is ludicrous to him. If, on the other hand, that same patient’s wife is five minutes late to their couples appointment, all hell can break loose. Not only might he fly off the handle at her, but also he will be able to give her an exact by the minute accounting of the money she has now wasted.

As an analyst practicing couples therapy, however, I have an instant opening to explore what his upset is about. We can explore what her lateness means to him and what it might be triggering from his past. We are right into the transference he is having toward her and which we can then begin to illuminate in everyday language.

What do you think are the most important ways in which your theory integrates and then evolves from traditional approaches to couples therapy?

My book covers quite a few psychoanalytic theories and others as well. I think one of the biggest contributions from the psychoanalytic canon is that treatment needs to begin symmetrically but eventually end asymmetrically. What I mean is that initially patients need to experience our deep empathic understanding of their conscious complaints. This is Step One of my model, and it rests heavily upon themes from self psychology and intersubjective systems theory. The beauty of this is that when couples present with an adversarial tone each partner not only experiences the analyst as grasping his or her experience, but also sees that the analyst can understand something of the other, something that previously hadn’t been understood. This creates hope. But for the work to be thorough it must also eventually take up the asymmetry in human relations, i.e. the importance of each partner being different, from the analyst and from one another. This is what I refer to as the “relational turn” of the model starting at Step Four and following through to Step Six.

Getting to this often means taking up what is less accessible to the empathic introspective approach and arises instead through enactments, i.e., what gets enacted in the treatment with all three parties, taking up the unconscious material that is on the editing room floor of their narratives. Step Four is about “awakening the slumbering giants” of their unconscious minds and further illuminates what is deeply at stake in the kinds of “doer/done-to” binaries that keep them perpetually at odds with one another. In Steps Five and Six these become vastly clearer. This is critically important because you cannot authentically negotiate intersubjectively (the outcome of Step Six) that which has not been negotiated intrapsychically (the work of Step Five).

Step four of your six step method particularly got my attention, the step in which the dread to repeat negative repetitive transference patterns shifts into the dread not to. I’m wondering how you think that works. How do you see couples making this very difficult yet critically important shift in their relationship?

As an example, let’s say that the initial complaint of one of the partners is that there isn’t enough intimacy in the relationship, sexually or otherwise. Then let’s say that the work of Step One ferrets out some of the more conscious reasons why this hasn’t been happening. Greater mutual recognition occurs, followed by more openness to being intimate. As the wished-for intimacy occurs, however, the partner with the initial complaint begins to become uncomfortable with it. In Step Four I invoke a lyric from Irving Berlin which is: “When you get what you want, you don’t want what you get!” What the initially complaining partner starts to discover is her somewhat schizoid side. That is, the absence of intimacy she consciously protested is now something that she fears when she really begins to get it.

Making this shift means helping each partner get much more curious about their psychodynamic process. That is, there is more going on unconsciously than they are aware of, and discovering this can be very exciting both personally as well as for their relationship. This is where we see what Philip Bromberg described as patients “wishing to remain the same while changing.”

I find it useful in Steps Four, Five, and Six to help the patients see their multiple self-states that many relationalists talk about. I talk about our having more or less a kind of “committee of the mind” and that all its members are not always in agreement. In fact, some are not even being recognized in the “conference room of the mind,” so to speak. Again invoking Philip Bromberg, our human problem is “to feel like one, while being many.”

I’m wondering what types of couples you think are the most challenging for clinicians to work with. Could you give a brief example?

In the book I talk about how our work as couples therapists is often akin to the work of oncologists. That is, that when a couple walks through our door, we soon begin to see what stage of cancer their relationship is in. It may not be salvageable. The statistic is that 80% of those entering couples treatment end up in divorce. (However, 80% of the couples I see remain together). The oncology metaphor enables me to throw everything I have at them to see what can become possible. Death—aka divorce—always remains a possibility and I frequently will say that. That said, I also tell couples that motivation is the key to all psychotherapy and if they are committed to working as hard as I am, I promise them either a better marriage or a better divorce. Bear in mind that divorce rarely means that partners will never have to deal with one another again, especially when there are children, friends, and families in common.

This is a round about way at getting to your question about what can be most challenging for the therapist. In Step Three I talk quite a bit about mentalization, the capacity to recognize oneself and one’s partner as having a subjective sense of reality and initiative. Perhaps one of the hardest partners to deal with is one whose mentalization is dominated by “psychic equivalence,” in which a person believes that what he or she experiences IS objective reality, and that whoever disagrees is crazy because it does not accord with this “god’s-eye-view” of reality. That patient can have a hard time embracing that his or her reality and his partner’s are unique subjective views borne out of their unique ways of discovering, organizing, and creating their perspectives on the world. This kind of patient is deeply threatened by difference, the partner’s difference as well as the therapist’s. It takes quite a lot of finesse to get under this pervasive mentalizing style to get access to what it being defended against.

You illustrated the cover of this new book. It’s gorgeous! I’m wondering if you could discuss your painting and other artistic endeavors.

I took art classes in painting (mostly portraiture), drawing, and sculpting for about a decade starting in 1994. I love it. And I painted and drew regularly through 2008. Then my interests in writing began to be so time consuming that I had little time for art.

Regarding the cover painting, I wanted the cover to be a painting of mine. My wife Marcia came up with the idea of the three interlinking hands from a stock photo she found on the internet. Unfortunately, all three hands were male. I knew I needed a female hand, so the solution became to use Marcia’s hand as a model. Commenting on how much Marcia was helpful throughout writing my book, I often also joke that Marcia lent a hand to this book in more ways than one.

You’ve been involved in IARPP for many years. Could you describe how you became involved and how this organization has impacted your work?

I am one of the remaining founding Board Members of the IARPP. Although I wasn’t a part of the New York group that started it all, I was one of the “outliers” from outside NYC giving the center group advice from afar. Being a part of IARPP is probably the most important thing in my career as a psychoanalyst.

All of this good fortune came out of my long distance supervision with Steve Mitchell on my third control case during my analytic training at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. Steve and I met weekly on the phone from 1994 through 1996. We had a very good connection and that, along with a comparable connection with Lew Aron, resulted in my involvement years before IARPP actually was launched. This also included Steve asking me to chair the proposed 2004 second international IARPP conference in Los Angeles which I did with the close comfort and help of Spyros Orfanos and Jody Davies.

What other projects and professional activities are you working on these days?

The book’s publication has stirred up considerable interest around the world, leading to invitations to present all over. That’s been really fun. After I present in Australia in October this year I will have presented on every continent in the world except Africa.

I am still busy promoting the book as I can, but I am also slowly gathering ideas for my next book on the topic of improvisation in psychoanalysis. It’s an area of interest that has occupied me since my first publication in this area in 2001, my first of 12 articles and chapters on the subject.

Thank you, Phil, for taking the time to answer our questions.

Thank you, Christina, and everyone else at IARPP eNews for your interest! This has been fun!

Link: http://www.routledgementalhealth.com/books/details/9780415889254/?utm_campaign=SBU2_ADT_2pr_1em_4psy_49581_9780415889254_20%%20discount%20&utm_source=adestra&utm_medium=email

Philip A. Ringstrom
5004 Haskell Avenue
Encino, CA 91436
email Phil Ringstrom

Interviewer contact information:
Christina Emanuel
16 S. Oakland Ave., Suite 201
Pasadena, CA 91101
email Christina Emanuel

Presentations

Michael Eigen
Dianne Elise
Pamela Raab
Dan Shaw

A Memoir of the Future

Presented by Michael Eigen (USA)

Mike Eigen will be showing an unfinished movie based on Wilfred Bion’s autobiographical works and A Memoir of the Future on October 19, 2014, from 1:00 to 4:00pm at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP), 40 West 13th Street, in New York City. The movie was made by the director Kumar Shahani in India (the place of Bion’s birth), in 1982 and 1983, but was never finished owing, in part, to financial difficulties and a tragic event. Extant scenes will be shown and Mike will lead audience discussion. The script was written by Kumar Shahani and Meg Harris Williams. Actors include Angela Pleasance, Sir Nigel Hawthorne, Peter Frith, Alaknanda Samarth, Carol Drinkwater, Robert Burbage, Jonathan Page, Neil Cunningham, and Jalal Agha. Characters are drawn from phases of Bion’s life and psyche and the culture of his time. After the showing, the script will be studied in Mike’s ongoing Tuesday seminars, together with A Memoir of the Future.

225 Central Park West, Apt. 101A
New York, NY 10024
email Michael Eigen

Failure to Thrive: Shame, Inhibition, and
Masochistic Submission in Women

Presented by Dianne Elise (USA)

This presentation will take place at the Clinical and Cultural Diversity Conference at the Austin Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology (ASPP) and the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies (CFPS), on November 22, 2014. In my presentation I approach masochistic submission in women—a “failure to thrive”—from the perspective of undermined female desire. Masochism can be viewed as a disorder of desire. I conceptualize masochistic submission as a relinquishment of one’s own desire, motivated by a fear of object loss. Shame and a depleted sense of self worth lead to inhibiting one’s own desire, the woman instead trying to fulfill the desire of the other, and typically failing to do so.

Masochistic submission in females, as the expression of a felt need to secure relational bonds, is directly linked to elements of the girl’s oedipal experience that may heighten insecurity regarding the capacity to obtain and retain one’s erotic object. Compromised confidence with obtaining and keeping one’s sexual love object is the heritage of what has been classically referred to as the negative oedipal complex. I propose that a girl’s experience of the first oedipal object, her mother, not being “accessible”—because she is a girl—may play a role in generating a relational strategy of masochistic submission as a fearful “grasp” on the object. Shame as a female leads to women becoming not only invested in, but often wedded to, self-destruction rather than “self-construction.” Female masochism easily resides with male narcissism. Rather than thinking in terms of sado-masochism, a maso-narcissistic pairing is theorized.

email Dianne Elise

Melanie Klein at the Theater: Love, Guilt and Reparation
in Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale.”

Presented by Pamela Raab (USA)

IARPP member, Pamela Raab (New York, Institute for Expressive Analysis and National Institute for the Psychotherapies) and her colleague, Cenk Cokuslu (New York, Director, Institute for Expressive Analysis) presented papers at the 31st International Conference on Psychology and the Arts in Madrid, on June 27th, 2014. This conference attracts a rich variety of clinicians and academics from institutions worldwide, and is known for its focus on using a psychoanalytic lens through which to examine works of art, most notably literature.

Using Shakespeare’s play, “The Winter’s Tale,” Raab and Cokuslu gave papers entitled:

Melanie Klein at the Theater: Love, Guilt and Reparation in Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale.” (Raab)

Thus the Whirligig of Time Brings or Not: Temporality in “The Winter’s Tale.” (Cokuslu)

Pamela Raab
115 Washington Place, #4
New York, NY 10014
email Pamela Raab

Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation

Presented by Dan Shaw (USA)

On Saturday, November 8th, Dan Shaw will present on the subject of his book, “Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation,” at the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis (ICP) in New York, along with Shelly Rosen, a director of the Trauma Studies Program at ICP; and speakers who are former cult members. The program will address the issue of traumatic abuse in cults. Shaw will discuss his concept of the relational system of the traumatizing narcissist in the context of cults, and describe post-cult trauma and its treatment. Details of this program are still being finalized. Refer to the ICP website, at http://icpnyc.org/, as more information becomes available.

And on Saturday, Nov. 15th, Shaw will present to the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society (TBPS) in Tampa, Florida, on Nov. 15th, from 8:15 am to 4:30 pm. This workshop will review the concepts of traumatic narcissism developed in Shaw’s book, and will include a clinical presentation by a Tampa Bay Society participant, which Shaw will discuss with the participants. Visit http://tbpsychoanalytic.org/ for further details.

He gave a similar presentation to the New York State Society of Clinical Social Workers (NYSSCSW) in New York City on Sunday, October 12^th.

Shaw was also interviewed on the subject of traumatic narcissism by Rob Kall for “The Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show”. A podcast of the interview is on iTunes, and can be streamed for free. Go to https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/rob-kall-bottom-up-radio-show/id359765013?mt=2

Shaw locates the roots of narcissism in relational trauma, and describes the relational dynamics of the traumatizing narcissist. He details the traumatizing narcissist’s need to subjugate his (or her) objects by destabilizing and invalidating the object’s subjectivity. By establishing hegemony for his subjectivity, suppressing his object’s capacity for developing good enough subjectivity, and trapping the object in the sado-masochistic binary, the traumatizing narcissist maintains the narcissistic delusion of omnipotence. Shaw’s work on “traumatic narcissism” has been widely acclaimed by colleagues and lay readers alike.

Details for the programs can also be found on Dan’s website, www.danielshawlcsw.com

And here is a link to information about his new book: http://www.routledgementalhealth.com/books/details/9780415510257/

Dan Shaw
211 W. 56th St., Apt, 5K
New York, NY 10019
99 Main St.
Nyack, NY 10960

email Dan Shaw

2 books by Andrew Samuels

Passions, Persons, Psychotherapy, Politics
Relational Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis and Counselling

Andrew Samuels (UK)

Jacket copy: Andrew Samuels is one of the best known figures internationally in the fields of psychotherapy, Jungian analysis, relational psychoanalysis and counselling and in academic studies in those areas. His work is a blend of the provocative and original together with the reliable and scholarly. His many books and papers figure prominently on reading lists on clinical and academic teaching contexts.

This self-selected collection, Passions, Persons, Psychotherapy and Politics, brings together some of his major writings at the interface of politics and therapy thinking. In this volume, he includes chapters on the market economy, prospects for eco-psychology and environmentalism; the role of the political Trickster, particularly the female Trickster; chapters on the father; on relations between women and men and his celebrated and radical critique of the Jungian idea of ‘the feminine principle’. Clinical material consists of his work on parents and on the therapy relationship. The book concludes with his seminal and transparent work on Jung and anti-semitism and an intriguing account of the current trajectory of the Jungian field.

Samuels has written a highly personal and confessional introduction to the book. Each chapter also has its own topical introduction, written in a clear and informal style. There is also much that will challenge long-held beliefs of many working in politics and in the social sciences. This unique collection of papers will be of interest to psychotherapists, Jungian analysts, psychoanalysts and counsellors – as well as those undertaking academic work in those areas.

Link: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415707923/

Relational Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis and Counselling

Jacket copy: Is therapy’s relational turn only something to celebrate? It is a major worldwide trend taking place in all the therapy traditions. But up to now appreciation of these developments has not been twinned with well-informed and constructive critique. Hence practitioners and students have not been able to engage as fully as they might with the complex questions and issues that relational working presents. Relational Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis and Counselling: Appraisals and reappraisals seeks to redress this balance.

In this unique book, Del Loewenthal and Andrew Samuels bring together the contributions of writers from several countries and many therapy modalities, all of whom have engaged with what ‘relational’ means – whether to espouse the idea, to urge caution or to engage in sceptical reflection.

Relational Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis and Counselling: Appraisals and reappraisals presents clinical work of the highest standard in a way that is moving and draws the reader in. The more intellectual contributions are accessible and respectful, avoiding the polarising tendencies of the profession. At a time when there has been a decline in the provision and standing of the depth therapies across the globe, this book shows that, whatever the criticisms, there is still creative energy in the field. It is hoped that practitioners and students in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy counselling and counselling psychology will welcome this book for its cutting edge content and compassionate tone.

Link: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415721547/

email Andrew Samuels

Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Legacy of the Third Reich

Emily Kuriloff (USA)

For most of the twentieth century, Jewish and/or politically leftist European psychoanalysts rarely linked their personal trauma history to their professional lives, for they hoped their theory—their Truth—would transcend subjectivity and achieve a universality not unlike the advances in the “hard” sciences. Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Legacy of the Third Reich confronts the ways in which previously avoided persecution, expulsion, loss, and displacement before, during, and after the Holocaust shaped what was, and is, psychoanalysis.

Link: http://www.routledgementalhealth.com/books/details/9780415883191/

Emily Kuriloff
5 West 86th Street Suite 1B-C
New York, NY 10024
email Emily Kuriloff

The author will be presenting sections of the book as the keynote speaker at NAAP’s annual conference on November 15 in NYC: http://naap.org/website/annual-conference

2 books by Michael Eigen

Faith
The Birth of Experience

Michael Eigen (USA)

This book explores psychoanalytic faith and, more generally, the role of faith in the therapeutic process. In his earlier work, Eigen distinguished faith from beliefs used to organize it, the latter at once bringing people together and creating violent oppositions, belief as a defense against faith. In this new work, Eigen dives into faith experience itself and shares what he finds.

Faith spans many dimensions. The opening chapters focus on variations of faith, beginning with nature, sleep, beauty, goodness, the opening-closing of the human face, and the paradox of the growth of faith through pain and shattering. Accounts of faith in the author’s life lead to creative readings of Winnicott followed by meditations on evil. A chapter is devoted to teaching and learning Bion, who called faith the psychoanalytic attitude (or called the psychoanalytic attitude Faith). Another chapter discusses variants of everyday mystical participation and a climactic moment in the Zohar, a principal part of the Kabbalah. The book ends with interviews involving the author’s development as a psychotherapist-psychoanalyst, his views on mental health and society today, followed by a note on faith-work.

Faith: http://www.karnacbooks.com/Product.asp?PID=35458

The birth of experience goes on all life long. Giving birth to oneself involves many processes. The first chapter of this book expands on Eigen’s final talk on “Psychoanalysis and Kabbalah” for the New York University Postdoctoral Contemplative Studies Project, and focuses in particular on an intertwining of beauty and destruction. Beauty is the heart of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, intricately linked both to other capacities and to catastrophic devastation. Interestingly, Bion also links faith and catastrophe, and writes of psychoanalytic “beauty,” thereby creating a rich dance of psychoanalysis with Kabbalah. Winnicott adds his own special touch, associating the fate of a vital spark with trauma as the personality begins to form, and with the work of spontaneous recovery that is a profound part both of living and of therapy sessions.

The second part of the book is new and focuses on birth processes at different ages and situations, exploring in detail how psychoanalysis interweaves with themes from life, clinical work, and Kabbalah. Failed birth processes are part of living but so is the need to “midwife” existence. Eigen suggests that there may be some kind of “organ” that permeates, scans, and tastes shifting centers of experience, taking note of their fate and partnering their development, a kind of inner tuning sense in search of cultivation, spanning what we call conscious and unconscious life, mind and body, and testing the weather for favorable birth conditions. Often we do not know exactly what is happening or how, but sense something germinating. Domains open that are not confineable or restricted by the tools at hand, which is perhaps one reason why analysts are called toolmakers, as experience and the tools used to understand it become part of further birth processes. In this way, Eigen shows how the intimate fusion of psychological and spiritual currents generate new tastes of living.

The Birth of Experience: http://www.karnacbooks.com/Product.asp?PID=35457&MATCH=1

Michael Eigen
225 Central Park West, Apt. 101A
New York, NY 10024
email Michael Eigen