Further Developments in Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, 1980s-2010s is the second collection of selected classic articles of the modern era by psychoanalysts identified with the interpersonal perspective. The first, The Interpersonal Perspective in Psychoanalysis, 1960s-1990s presented articles by second and third generation interpersonalists. This book contains those written by the third and fourth generation of interpersonal psychoanalysts. The articles selected by the Editors for this second book extend the theme of transference and countertransference that was the throughline of the first book, lending even greater significance in clinical practice to the analyst’s subjectivity and its relation to the patient’s mind. One chapter after another in this book reveal ways that the analyst’s experience can lead to a greater appreciation of the patient’s unconscious experience. It is because of papers such as these that interpersonal psychoanalysis has been described as the origin, at least in North America, of the contemporary clinical interest in psychoanalytic subjectivity. As in the first, the articles in this second book include classic contributions from Bromberg, Greenberg, Hirsch, Mitchell, Levenson, Stern, and Wolstein; these writers are joined here by Blechner, Bonovitz, Buechler, Fiscalini, Held-Weiss, Kuriloff, and White. 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 its origin in the 1930s, many otherwise well-read psychoanalysts and psychotherapists are not well informed about the field. Along with its companion work, this book 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, the book will be useful in placing a selection of classic interpersonal articles and their writers in key historical context.

A decade in the making, the Handbook is the definitive contemporary exposition of interpersonal psychoanalysis. It provides an authoritative overview of development, psychopathology, and treatment as conceptualized from the interpersonal viewpoint.

This volume brings together 14 classic papers by interpersonal pioneers. Collectively, these papers not only demonstrate the coherence and explanatory richness of interpersonal psychoanalysis; they anticipate the emphasis on relational patterns and analyst-analysand interaction that typifies much recent theorizing. Each paper receives a substantial introduction from a leading contemporary interpersonalist. The pioneers of interpersonal psychoanalysis are: H. Sullivan, F. Fromm-Reichmann, J. Rioch, C. Thompson, R. Crowley, E. Schachtel, E. Tauber, E. Fromm, H. Bone, E. Singer, D. Schecter, J. Barnett, S. Arieti, and J.Schimel.

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 its origin in the 1930s, many otherwise well-read psychoanalysts and psychotherapists are not well informed about the field. The Interpersonal Perspective in Psychoanalysis, 1960s–1990s 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, the book 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. The relationship needs to be grasped as one taking place between two very particular people. Many of the papers are by writers well known in the broader psychoanalytic world, such as Bromberg, Greenberg, Levenson, and Mitchell. But also included are those by writers who, while not as widely recognized beyond the interpersonal literature, have been highly influential among interpersonalists, including Barnett, Schecter, Singer, and Wolstein. Donnel B. Stern and Irwin Hirsch, prominent interpersonalists themselves, present each piece with a prologue that contextualizes the author and their 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 will appeal greatly to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists wanting to know more about interpersonal theory and practice than can be learned from current sources.

This book is Donnel B. Stern’s latest contribution to the kind of understanding of the psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic process offered by field theory. Stern anchors his understanding of therapeutic action in the freedom of both patient and analyst to create a meaningful experience with minimum inhibition. The field’s capacity to generate meaning—and thus to make possible fully realized human living—rows from its freedom to respond spontaneously to the feelings, wants, and needs of its participants. To whatever extent this spontaneity is diminished, as it is in unconscious mutual enactment, we can be sure that some part of the field is frozen or otherwise rigidified. This position serves as the foundation of the psychoanalysis that Stern practices. The analyst aims to feel their way into compromises in the field, and then do whatever they can to grasp and dissolve them, knowing that they will have to be visited repeatedly, and dissolved again. These insights into interpersonal and relational field theory lead to descriptions of clinical interventions that are focused on the moment-to-moment emotional experience of both the patient and the analyst. With valuable contributions to theory and emotionally immediate clinical vignettes, this book is essential for all psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists wishing to understand how the analyst’s interventions grow from the analyst’s emotional involvement in the clinical process.

From its very inception, psychoanalysis has been a discipline encompassing two contradictory tendencies. This dualistic tendency – tradition alongside disenchantment and the will to improve knowledge – is likely responsible for psychoanalysis’s powerful capacity to survive. In Innovations in Psychoanalysis: Originality, Development, Progress, Aner Govrin and Jon Mills bring together the most eminent and diverse psychoanalysts to reflect upon the evolution, vitality, and richness of psychoanalysis today. Psychoanalysis is undergoing significant transformations involving the entire spectrum of disciplinary differences. This book illuminates these transformations, importantly revealing the innovations in technique, the evolving understanding of theory within existing schools of thought, the need for empirical resurgence, innovations in infant research, neuropsychoanalysis, in the development of new interventions and methods of treatment, and in philosophical and metatheoretical paradigms. Uniquely bringing together psychoanalysts representing different fields of expertise, the contributors answer two questions in this collection of ground-breaking essays: "What are the most important developments in psychoanalysis today?" and "What impact has your chosen perspective had on conducting psychoanalytic treatment?" Their thought-provoking and challenging answers are essential for anyone who wants to fully understand the field of psychoanalysis in our changing, current world. Innovations in Psychoanalysis brings a whole array of differing schools of thought in dialogue with one another and will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychotherapists, philosophers, and historians of the behavioral sciences worldwide.