Science and technology have brought about profound changes in the way medicine is practiced. These developments save more lives, but can have a negative impact on psyches and relationships. Thoroughly examining the way medicine is practised in the 21st century, this ground-breaking new book emphasizes the interpersonal, subjective and unconscious processes. It provides important and useful insights into the many ways patients, families and medical practitioners are affected by modern medicine. A Psychodynamic Understanding of Modern Medicine offers profound ways to understand these issues in all their complexity and depth, and demonstrates ways to effectively manage difficulties by drawing on psychoanalytic principles. In so doing, the book directly addresses topics rarely covered from a psychological perspective, such as organ donation, assisted suicide requests, impaired mobility, assisted reproduction, elder abuse, placebos, dialysis units, NICU, general hospital setting, provider-patient relationship and family dynamics with chronic illness. The book is highly recommended to all who are involved with modern medicine. Medical practitioners will have a better means of understanding psychological and interpersonal problems that present themselves in various medical settings. Psychologists and psychiatrists will be more able to intervene when problems occur, including when they involve the interaction between practitioner and patient or family. It is also illuminating reading for students with an interest in medical anthropology, and social and narrative medicine, and for nurses and medical social workers.

More than ever, the aging process is recognized as carrying a special set of emotional challenges–especially when acute or chronic medical conditions are involved. In this light, Psychodynamic Perspectives on Aging and Illness presents a fresh, contemporary application of psychodynamic theory, addressing the complex issues surrounding declining health. Informed by the spectrum of psychodynamic thought from self, relational, and classical theories, this forward looking volume offers more modern interpretations of theory, and techniques for working with a growing, complicated, but surprisingly resilient population. It illuminates how to enhance the therapeutic relationship in key areas such as addressing body- and self-image issues, approach sensitive topics, and understand the disconnect that can occur between medical patients and the often impersonal, technology-driven health care system. At the same time, the author cogently argues for pluralism in a therapeutic approach that is frequently threatened by forces both within and outside the field. Among the topics covered: Medical illness as trauma. Idealization and the culture of medicine. Normative and pathological narcissism in the ill and/or aging patient. Noncompliant and self-destructive behaviors. Transference and countertransference issues. Psychotherapy with cognitively impaired adults. Grief, loss, and hope. Expanding on what we know and candid about what we don’t, Psychodynamic Perspectives on Aging and Illness offers mental health researchers and practitioners an insightful framework for improving the lives of older patients.

The importance of conducting empirical research for the future of psychodynamics is presented in this excellent new volume. In Handbook of Evidence Based Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: Bridging the Gap Between Science and Practice, the editors provide evidence that supports this type of research for two primary reasons. The first reason concerns the current marginalization of psychodynamic work within the mental health field. Sound empirical research has the potential to affirm the important role that psychodynamic theory and treatment have in modern psychiatry and psychology. The second reason that research is crucial to the future of psychodynamic work concerns the role that systematic empirical investigations can have in developing and refining effective approaches to a variety of clinical problems. Empirical research functions as a check on subjectivity and theoretical alliances in on-going attempts to determine the approaches most helpful in working with patients clinically. Handbook of Evidence Based Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: Bridging the Gap Between Science and Practice brings together a panel of distinguished clinician-researchers who have been publishing their findings for decades. This important new book provides compelling evidence that psychodynamic psychotherapy is an effective treatment for many common psychological problems.

Endorsements: "The Second Edition of Psychodynamic Perspectives on Aging and Illness is a timely and superb revision which offers health-care professionals working at the mind/body interface a paradigm shift. For far too long, the wisdom of psychoanalysis as a tool to understand the suffering inherent in aging and illness has been devalued and neglected. With this update, Dr. Greenberg incontrovertibly corrects this lapse. Her integration of current scientific research, alongside a user-friendly discussion of the theory and practice of psychodynamic psychotherapy, is an important contribution to the psychology of medicine. Several topics are elaborated; the constructs of hysteria and somatization, the biology of stress, the impact of attachment history on coping with sickness as well as the experiences of trauma and grief. As with the first edition, the idea that the patient’s experience of illness cannot be understood without including the subjectivity of the practitioner who provides care is considered and done so with more awareness of this complexity. Each chapter now contains a section on “Suggested Techniques” that succinctly presents a guideline for applying the ideas set forth. Other no table aspects of the book are its reflections on the culture of medicine and the insights about the influences of contemporary Western life on the manifestation and adjustment to illness. This edition is, above all, essential for those practitioners dedicated to providing collaborative and interdisciplinary health-care which is both biologically and psychologically informed. As with the First Edition, it will continue to be required reading." Marilyn S. Jacobs, Ph.D., ABPP, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA "A wonderful, well-researched, and important book that proves to be as much about humanity and resilience as it is about human psychology." Lee Daniel Kravetz Author of Supersurvivors: The surprising Link Between Suffering & Success "Tamara McClintock Greenberg is one of the leading health psychologists of our time. In this second edition of her classic text, she corrects the much overlooked interface between the psychodynamics of aging, illness, and the doctor-patient relationship offering insights that no other practitioner or theorist has accomplished to date. Combining her training and expertise in psychology and behavioural medicine, she facilely navigates the turbid waters of how medical illness and aging is informed by unconscious dynamics, childhood familial relations, somatisation, coping and recovery, and the convergence of mind and body. Healthcare practitioners of all types who work therapeutically with chronically ill and older adults will find this to be a perspicacious and indispensible approach to clinical praxis." Jon Mills, PsyD, PhD, C.Psych., ABPP, Professor of Psychology & Psychoanalysis, Adler Graduate Professional School, Toronto “In the second edition of Psychodynamic Perspectives on Aging and Illness Dr Tamara Greenberg makes a remarkable contribution to those who treat patients with medical illnesses as they age. Her psychodynamically informed approach to patients in later life couldn’t come at a better time as our population becomes older. Challenging the field's dogma that older patients are too set-in-their-ways to make personality changes, Dr Greenberg demonstrates in this book how wrong that notion was. We are all a work in-progress until the very end. This is a must-read practical book for therapists, nurses, families, physicians, family and estate lawyers, and health care navigators.” Louann Brizendine, M.D., Professor and Author of "The Female Brain" and "The Male Brain" , Lynne and Marc Benioff Endowed Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Founder/ Women's Mood and Hormone Clinic, UCSF University of California, San Francisco This timely update of the bedrock text reflects what we now know—and are still finding out—about the benefits of psychodynamic psychotherapy for older adults facing chronic conditions. Expanding on the original, the author balances the physical and experiential factors affecting patients’ physical illnesses and related emotional distress while situating core psychodynamic constructs in the context of illness and aging. Special attention is paid to technique, giving therapists practical guidance on dealing with transference and countertransference issues, working with patients in cognitive decline, and navigating complexities of age, class, and culture. The book also reviews the current evidence on how and why psychodynamic therapy helps medical patients with coping, adapting, and healing. Included in the coverage: Technology, idealization, and unconscious dynamics in the culture of medicine. Narcissistic aspects of aging and illness. Grey areas: when illness may be particularly impacted by psychological variables. Cognitive changes and implications for the therapeutic encounter. The influence of psychological factors and relationships on medical illness. Hope and grief: the introduction of an emotional language. The Second Edition of Psychodynamic Perspectives on Aging and Illness skillfully follows its predecessor as a powerful, plain-spoken mentor to therapists working in hospitals, long-term care facilities, and outpatient practice.

'There are few situations in life which are more difficult to cope with than an adolescent son or daughter during the attempt to liberate themselves' Anna Freud was one of the most creative and innovative thinkers in the history of psychoanalysis, whose pioneering work in child analysis and development revolutionized the treatment of the young. This essential anthology of her writings includes extracts from her classic The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, as well as papers on normal and pathological child development, on adolescence, trauma, aggression and analytical technique. Together they offer a definitive overview of her entire career, displaying the richness, variety and originality of her thinking. 'An achievement of the first importance ... underlines the clarity and cogency of Anna Freud's thinking, [and] makes it accessible to a wide audience' Clifford Yorke, former Medical Director, the Anna Freud Centre, London

The Business of Being Made is the first book to critically analyze assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) from a transdisciplinary perspective integrating psychoanalytic and cultural theories. It is a ground-breaking collection exploring ARTs through diverse methods including interview research, clinical case studies, psychoanalytic based ethnography, and memoir. Gathering clinicians and researchers who specialize in this area, this book engages current research in psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology, philosophy and debates in feminist, queer and cultural theory about affect, temporality, and bodies. With psychoanalysis as its fulcrum, The Business of Being Made explores the social constructions and personal experiences of ARTs. Katie Gentile frames the cultural context, exploring the ways ARTs have become a complex form of playing with time, attempting to manufacture a hopeful future in the midst of growing global uncertainty. The contributors then present a range of varied experiences related to ARTs, including: Interviews with women and men undergoing ARTs; A psychoanalytic memoir of male infertility; Clinical research and work with transgender, gay and lesbian patients creating new Oedipal constellations, the experiences of LBGTQ people within the medical system and the variety of families that emerge; Research on the experiences of egg donors (now central to the business of ARTs) and a corresponding clinical case study of successful egg donation; The experiences of ongoing failure which is the often unacknowledged for ART procedures; How and when people choose to stop using ARTs; A psychoanalytic ethnography of a neonatal intensive care unit populated in part with the babies created through these technologies and their parents, haggard and in shock after years of failed attempts. Full of original material, The Business of Being Made conveys the ambivalence of these technologies without simplifying their complicated consequences for the bodies of individuals, the family, cultures, and our planet. This book will be relevant to clinicians, medical and psychological personnel working in assisted reproductive technologies and infertility, as well as academics working in the fields of sociology, literature, queer and feminist theories and at the intersections of cultural, critical and psychoanalytic theories.

With its simple, respectful, user-friendly tone, the first edition of Inside Out and Outside In quickly became a beloved book among mental health practitioners in a variety of disciplines. The second edition continues in this tradition with chapters revised to reflect the most current theory and clinical practice. In addition, it offers exciting new chapters, on attachment, relational, and intersubjective theories, respectively, as well as on trauma.