By William J. Coburn (USA)
P
sychoanalytic Complexity: Clinical Attitudes for Therapeutic Change (Routledge, 2014) is the application of a multidisciplinary, explanatory theory to clinical psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. It offers a rich, explanatory framework with which to understand the origins and perpetuation of emotional distress and associated painful relationship experiences and a practical mode of transforming this framework into a clinical sensibility (or a specific array of clinical attitudes) that will advance clinicians’ work and more effectively bring about therapeutic change. This book presents a revolutionary and far-reaching counterpoint to the remnants of Cartesianism and scientism, respecting and encouraging human anomaly rather than pathologizing or obliterating the uniqueness of the individual. It explores the value of complexity theory as an explanatory framework with which clinicians can better understand, retrospectively, therapeutic action and the change process. It further extends this sensibility by examining the ways in which such a theoretical framework can inform what clinicians can do, prospectively, to effect positive change within the therapeutic relationship, arguing that the medium of bringing to light new ways of relating, emotional experiencing, and meaning making resides in the fundamental attitudes derived from a complexity theory sensibility as applied to psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.
Link: https://www.routledge.com/products/9780415896245
William J. Coburn, PhD, PsyD, is Founding Editor Emeritus and Consulting Editor of the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, Associate Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues; Editorial Board Member of Psychoanalytic Inquiry; and Faculty Member and Training and Supervising Analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. Author of three books and numerous articles and book chapters, he has researched and written extensively in the areas of intersubjectivity, complexity, countertransference, and supervision. His most recent book is Psychoanalytic Complexity: Clinical Attitudes For Therapeutic Change (Routledge, 2014).