Explores the field of comparative-integrative psychoanalysis. This book provides an invaluable framework for approaching the fractious state of the psychoanalytic discipline, divided as it is into diverse schools of thought, presenting many conceptual challenges. It draws on insights from neighboring disciplines to shed light on the issue.

This practical and scholarly new text presents a comprehensive review and evaluation of the theory, research, and practice of psychodynamically oriented brief psychotherapy. It offers in-depth discussions of the major clinical and theoretical approaches, as well as examinations of other special topics in the application of brief therapy. Locating brief psychodynamic therapies within larger contexts, Stanley B. Messer and C. Seth Warren illuminate the impact of psychoanalytic ideas and theories - as well as cultural, historical, and intellectual trends - on each approach.

Watching people protest, one hypothesis is that underlying these actions for specific justifiable causes is a sense of wishing to belong, of wishing not to be alone. Recent knowledge from patients and empirical research shows the importance of belonging to groups to both psychological and physical well-being. The problems of many students, minority group members, immigrants, terrorists, and lonely people are linked to an insufficient sense of belonging. Whereas psychoanalytic theory has focused on the need for a secure attachment to a primary caretaker, it has failed to note the importance of a sense of belonging to the family group, a friendship group, a community, a religious group, a nation-state, etc. This book demonstrates the difficulties faced by those who immigrate, those who never feel a sense of their true selves as belonging in a family or a cohesive professional group, and the difficulties of psychoanalysts themselves in knowing where they belong in patients’ lives. The problems of breaking up marital and professional relationships as well as our relationship with the Earth are also discussed. Freudian theory rejected the idea of a sense of "oneness" with humanity as being infantile. Recent developments regarding the similarities between meditational practices and psychoanalysis have questioned Freud’s idea. This book shows the importance of an interpersonal/relational psychoanalysis focusing on real relationships and not simply one that examines inner conflicts. It will be useful to psychologists, other mental health practitioners, social scientists, and anyone with normal struggles in life.

Ever since its nascent days, psychoanalysis has enjoyed an uneasy coexistence with religion. However, in recent decades, many analysts have been more interested in the healing potential of both psychoanalytic and religious experience and have explored how their respective narrative underpinnings may be remarkably similar. In Toward Mutual Recognition, Marie T. Hoffman takes just such an approach. Coming from a Christian perspective, she suggests that the current relational turn in psychoanalysis has been influenced by numerous theorists - analysts and philosophers alike - who were themselves shaped by an embedded Christian narrative. As a result, the redemptive concepts of incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection - central to the tenets of Christianity - can be traced to relational theories, emerging analogously in the transformative process of mutual recognition in the concepts of identification, surrender, and gratitude, a trilogy which she develops as forming the "path of recognition." Each movement on this path of recognition is given thought-provoking, in-depth attention. Chapters dedicated to theoretical perspectives utilize the thinking of Benjamin, Hegel, and Ricoeur. In her historical perspectives, she explores the personal and professional histories of analysts such as Sullivan, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Erikson, Kohut, and Ferenczi, among others, who were influenced by the Christian narrative. Uniting it all together is the clinical perspective offered in the compelling extended case history of Mandy, a young lady whose treatment embodies and exemplifies each of the steps along the path of growth in both the psychoanalytic and Christian senses. Throughout, a relational sensibility is deployed as a cooperative counterpart to the Christian narrative, working both as a consilient dialogue and a vehicle for further integrative exploration. As a result, the specter of psychoanalysis and religion as mutually exclusive gives way to the hope and redemption offered by their mutual recognition.

Every day, clinicians encounter challenges to empathy and communication while struggling to assist patients with diverse life histories, character, sexuality, gender, psychopathology, cultural, religious, political, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. Most writing pertaining to ideas of similarity, discrepancy, and ‘the Other’ has highlighted differences. Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity and Difference: Navigating the Divide offers a different focus, emphasising points of contact, connection, and how divisions between people can be transcended. In-depth case material, astutely elucidated by diverse theoretical approaches, furnishes stimulating ideas and valuable suggestions for facilitating a meeting of minds and psychological growth in patients who might otherwise be difficult or impossible to engage. Exploring how psychoanalysts can navigate obstacles to understanding and communicating with suffering individuals, topics covered include: internal experience of likeness and difference in the patient; in the analyst; and how analysts can find echoes of themselves in patients. Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists will appreciate the importance and value of this wide-ranging, groundbreaking exploration of these insufficiently addressed dimensions of human experience.

Psychoanalytic Case Studies from an Interpersonal-Relational Perspective contains reports of long-term treatments, including many dialogues and dreams, with commentaries following each one. Drawing from theories that have been developed since Freud, the analysts focus on problems in living as opposed to diagnoses and repressed sexual and aggressive urges. They also express their own feelings towards patients and even their own dreams. The cases themselves include sexual abuse, a man whose father killed his mother, a change in sexual orientation, as well as those of depression, physical problems, and difficulties relating interpersonally, such as fear of rejection and rejecting help. Actual dialogues of sessions are featured, so that readers can see what takes place in psychoanalysis. The analysts here draw from theories of Sullivan, Fromm, Horney, and Fromm-Reichmann, Kohut, Winnicott, and more recently Levenson, Mitchell, Bromberg, Donnell Stern, and Aron, to name a few. Most contemporary case reports come from short-term therapies and many rely on techniques of changing conscious cognitions and encouraging new behaviors. The treatments in this book, while often including such interventions, explore more in-depth processes that may be unconscious and related to transferential expectations from previous relationships, encouraging new experiences and not simply explanations. Psychoanalytic Case Studies from an Interpersonal-Relational Perspective will be of great interest to interpersonal and relational psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in clinical practice.

What do therapists not talk about? What do we ignore/miss/sidestep? What factors—personal, social, political—inform our areas of blindness? This book names and explores what psychoanalytic theory often skips over or simplifies—how, when, and why we fail to uphold the professional ideal. Turning a critical eye on her own theory, Slochower reflects on how it, she, and the field have evolved and what remains unspoken. In so doing, she pushes us to do the same. With its sharp focus on both theory and clinical work, this book is essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.