Using a European style of analysis Frie examines the complex relationship between the theories of intersubjectivity, subjectivity, language and love in the work of a diverse body of philosophers and psychoanalysts.

This volume is the first concentrated effort to offer a philosophical critique of relational and intersubjective perspectives in contemporary psychoanalytic thought. The distinguished group of scholars and clinicians assembled here trace the theoretical underpinnings of relational psychoanalysis, its divergence from traditional psychoanalytic paradigms, and the broader implications for clinical reform and therapeutic practice.

The intersubjective perspective regards all psychological processes as emanating from personal interrelatedness. First presented by Robert D. Stolorow in his classic work Faces in a Cloud (1978), it is one of the most powerful concepts to be introduced into the post-Freudian era. In Worlds of Experience, Dr. Stolorow and two eminent colleagues elaborate on intersubjectivity, going beyond the clinical and theoretical questions of earlier work to explore the philosophical underpinnings of psychoanalytic theory and practice. The culmination of three decades of collaborative work, this book will be essential reading for academics, students, and clinicians.

Neurobiological research helps explain the experience of motherhood. This book, the exciting collaboration of a developmental psychoanalyst at the forefront of functional magnetic resonance attachment research and a leading neurobiological researcher on mirror neurons, presents a fresh and innovative look at intersubjectivity from a neurobiological and developmental perspective. Grounding their analysis of intersubjectivity in the newest advances from developmental neuroscience, modern attachment theory, and relational psychoanalysis, Massimo Ammaniti and Vittorio Gallese illustrate how brain development changes simultaneously with relationally induced alterations in the subjectivities of both mother and infant. Ammaniti and Gallese combine extensive current interdisciplinary research with in-depth clinical interviews that highlight the expectant mother’s changing subjective states and the various typologies of maternal representations. Building on Gallese’s seminal work with mirror neurons and embodied simulation theory, the authors construct a model of intersubjectivity that stresses not symbolic representations but intercorporeality from a second-person perspective. Charting the prenatal and perinatal events that serve as the neurobiological foundation for postnatal reciprocal affective communications, they conclude with direct clinical applications of early assessments and interventions, including interventions with pregnant mothers. This volume is essential for clinicians specializing in attachment disorders and relational trauma, child psychotherapists, infant mental health workers, pediatricians, psychoanalysts, and developmental researchers. It combines fascinating new information and illustrative clinical experience to illustrate the early intersubjective origins of our own and our patients’ internal worlds.

In this book, Lewis Kirshner explains and illustrates the concept of intersubjectivity and its application to psychoanalysis. By drawing on findings from neuroscience, infant research, cognitive psychology, Lacanian theory, and philosophy, Kirshner argues that the analytic relationship is best understood as a dialogic exchange of signs between two subjects—a semiotic process. Both subjects bring to the interaction a history and a set of unconscious desires, which inflect their responses. In order to work most effectively with patients, analysts must attend closely to the actual content of the exchange, rather than focusing on imagined contents of the patient's mind. The current situation revives a history that is shaped by the analyst's participation. Supported by numerous case studies, Intersubjectivity in Psychoanalysis: A Model for Theory and Practice is a valuable resource for psychotherapists and analysts seeking to refine their clinical goals and methods.

From an overview of the basic principles of intersubjectivity theory, Orange, Atwood, and Stolorow proceed to contextualist critiques of the concept of psychoanalytic technique and of the myth of analytic neutrality. They then examine the intersubjective contexts of extreme states of psychological disintegration, and conclude with an examination of what it means, philosophically and clinically, to think and work contextually. This lucidly written and cogently argued work is the next step in the development of intersubjectivity theory. In particular, it is a clinically grounded continuation of Stolorow and Atwood's Contexts of Being (TAP, 1992), which reconceptualized four foundational pillars of psychoanalytic theory -- the unconscious, mind-body relations, trauma, and fantasy -- from an intersubjective perspective. Working Intersubjectively expounds and illustrates the contextualist sensibility that grows out of this reconceptualization. Like preceding volumes in the Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series by Robert Stolorow and his colleagues, it will be theoretically challenging and clinically useful to a wide readership of psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically informed psychotherapists.

Understanding Experience: Psychotherapy and Postmodernism is a collection of innovative interdisciplinary essays that explore the way we experience and interact with each other and the world around us. The authors address the postmodern debate in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis through clinical and theoretical discussion and offer a view of the person that is unique and relevant today. The clinical work of Binswanger, Boss, Fromm, Fromm-Reichmann, Laing, and Lacan is considered alongside the theories of Buber, Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and others. Combining clinical data from psychotherapy and psychoanalysis with insights from European philosophy, this book seeks to fill a major gap in the debate over postmodernism and bridges the paradigmatic divide between the behavioural sciences and the human sciences. It will be of great interest to clinicians and students of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis who wish to come to terms with postmodernism, as well as those interested in the interaction of psychoanalysis, philosophy and social theory.