Beginning in 1933, after Sandor Ferenczi’s death, this volume draws extensively from interviews, personal correspondence, and scholarly essays to explore the latter part of Clara Thompson’s life and professional career. The reader is afforded an understanding of Thompson's development with the luminaries who influenced her, and who she, in turn, influenced, including Harry Stack Sullivan, Erich Fromm, and other "cultural" social scientists. Building on her collaborative work with Ferenczi, and influenced by Sullivan, Thompson’s pioneering essays expand the psychoanalytic perspective to embrace the dynamic interpersonal encounter between patient and analyst. Critical of Freud's views on women, Thompson also argues against the inequality of women and men in society, reflecting her own moral compass. This volume clarifies Thompson’s role in psychoanalytic history, reclaiming her numerous and valuable contributions to both the interpersonal psychoanalytic tradition and to the field of psychoanalysis as we know it today. D’Ercole’s artfully woven account of Thompson’s life will prove essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychologists, and anyone interested in the history of psychoanalysis.

Ann D’Ercole tells the story of Clara M. Thompson, drawing extensively on unpublished archival interviews and correspondence, to provide a full and complex picture of an early American pioneer of psychoanalysis. The book begins by exploring Thompson’s youth, which was steeped in evangelical Christianity, and conveys the difficulty that Thompson experienced as she resisted the restrictive conventions of femininity prevalent at the time. Despite this, Thompson’s talent as a student continually shines through, as D’Ercole gives readers an account of Thompson’s life at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where she would work alongside the innovative psychiatrist, Adolf Meyer. Thompson’s ground-breaking theoretical and clinical achievements continue to be celebrated, as D’Ercole explores Thompson’s life-changing experiences whilst in psychoanalytic treatment with Sándor Ferenczi. By allowing her voice to prevail, this book recognizes Thompson’s vital work in the formulation of interpersonal psychoanalysis, rendering it invaluable for interpersonal psychoanalysts wishing to understand Thompson’s role in the development of the school.

Clara Thompson was a leading representative of the cultural interpersonal school of psychoanalysis, sometimes known as the "neo-Freudians," which included Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, and Harry Stack Sullivan. "Classical analysts" once viewed neo-Freudians with the greatest suspicion and mistrust, yet today they can be seen for the innovative group of thinkers they were. Thompson's Psychoanalysis: Evolution and Development, first published in 1950, remains an enormously fair-minded discussion of the history of psychoanalytic theory and therapy. Psychoanalysis has always been a theory of personality as well as a technique of therapy. Since Freud was born in 1856, and was an outstanding representative of the culture of old Vienna, Thompson thought there was plenty of room for revising classical analytic thinking in light of later developments. Such revisionism, she believed, need not lose the essential appreciation of the dynamic unconscious within classical analysis. However, Thompson felt Freud's biological outlook needed to be supplemented by a culturally more sophisticated orientation, and she was among those who tried to put Freud's concepts of libido into historical perspective. Instead of psychoanalysis having as its objective the release of tensions, Thompson proposed that the goal of analysis ought to be the growth of the total personality. Her revisionism also meant that the scope of psychoanalytic treatment could be broadened well beyond the neuroses Freud sought to explain. Thompson well understood the impact of the social environment on character formation. The psychology of women needed to be rethought; differences between men and women could be partly explained by the social expectations that traditional Western culture had imposed on them. Thompson believed the whole analyst-patient relationship needed to be rethought; the real personality of the therapist has to be acknowledged, and the full human interplay between patient and analyst required examination. In the current positivistic therapeutic climate based on technological advances in psychopharmacology, the ethical and humanistic dimension may be lost. Reflecting on the work of Clara Thompson and the neo-Freudian school can remind us of earlier efforts to challenge therapeutic authority and their distinct relevance to our problems today.

What does it mean to be member of a gay/lesbian couple or family? The contributors to Uncoupling Convention: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Same-Sex Couples and Families address this question by drawing on two cultural movements of the twentieth century: psychoanalysis and the gay/lesbian civil rights movement. Taken together, these traditions provide a framework for understanding, and providing psychotherapeutic assistance to, gay and lesbian patients who present with troubled relationships. The contributors to this volume espouse a clinical focus that supplants the heterosexual perspectives of traditional psychoanalysis with new narratives about family life. Drawing on cultural, feminist, gay/lesbian, and queer studies, they illustrate how concepts of gender and sexuality are routinely informed by unproven heterosexist assumptions - both conscious and unconscious. By examining the changing developmental needs and family dynamics of gay and lesbian families, the contributors broaden our very understanding of what a family is. They illustrate how contrasting cultural constructions of homosexuality and family life play out in same-sex couples. They delineate the multiple realities of gender subjectivity, both in children and in their gay parents. They ponder how technology is shaping reproductive experiences, as lesbians become part of the biomedical system. And they explore recurrent themes of feeling different and ashamed, including the shameful secrecy surrounding same-sex couples' financial matters. In uncoupling conventions, the contributors are effectively coupling post-Freudian psychoanalysis with the insights of queer theory and the critical edge of contemporary cultural studies. The result is a framework for addressing the relational and family-related challenges of gay and lesbian patients that ranges far beyond traditional approaches and will benefit analytic, couples, and family therapists alike.

Many books have been written on the evils of commercialism in college sport, and the hypocrisy of payments to athletes from alumni and other sources outside the university. Almost no attention, however, has been given to the way that the National Collegiate Athletic Association has embraced professionalism through its athletic scholarship policy. Because of this gap in the historical record, the NCAA is often cast as an embattled defender of amateurism, rather than as the architect of a nationwide money-laundering scheme. Sack and Staurowsky show that the NCAA formally abandoned amateurism in the 1950s and passed rules in subsequent years that literally transformed scholarship athletes into university employees. In addition, by purposefully fashioning an amateur mythology to mask the reality of this employer-employee relationship, the NCAA has done a disservice to student-athletes and to higher education. A major subtheme is that women, such as those who created the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), opposed this hypocrisy, but lacked the power to sustain an alternative model. After tracing the evolution of college athletes into professional entertainers, and the harmful effects it has caused, the authors propose an alternative approach that places college sport on a firm educational foundation and defend the rights of both male and female college athletes. This is a provocative analysis for anyone interested in college sports in America and its subversion of traditional educational and amateur principles.

In this fascinating and robust volume, the editors have compiled a collection of articles that provides an account of their individual theoretical journeys as they trace the evolution of relational transactional analysis. They re-examine the term ‘relational’, offering the reader a multiplicity of ways in which to conceptualise the theory of transactional analysis from a truly pluralistic perspective. This collection of 14 stunning articles from the Transactional Analytic Journal, written over a period of nearly three decades, traces the evolutionary process of a way of thinking that incorporates both theoretical innovations and advanced methodological ideas. Central to the themes of this book is a theoretical understanding of the bidirectionality of the relational unconscious, alongside a methodology that not always, but most often, demands a two-person methodology in which the therapist’s subjectivity comes under scrutiny. Uniquely useful as a research tool for psychotherapists interested in the most up to date psychological theories, this book offers a perspective on relational theory that is both respectful and critical. It will be of enormously useful to the trainee, the researcher, the clinician and the supervisor and will help inform the development of a clinical dialectical mind.