Dr. Josephs's own point of view centers on one simple recommendation: to maintain a dynamic balance between empathy and analysis. It is an easy recommendation to make but difficult to implement.
Physicians who care for patients with life-threatening illnesses face daunting communication challenges. Patients and family members can react to difficult news with sadness, distress, anger, or denial. This book defines the specific communication tasks involved in talking with patients with life-threatening illnesses and their families. Topics include delivering bad news, transition to palliative care, discussing goals of advance-care planning and do-not-resuscitate orders, existential and spiritual issues, family conferences, medical futility, and other conflicts at the end of life. Drs Anthony Back, Robert Arnold, and James Tulsky bring together empirical research as well as their own experience to provide a roadmap through difficult conversations about life-threatening issues. The book offers both a theoretical framework and practical conversational tools that the practising physician and clinician can use to improve communication skills, increase satisfaction, and protect themselves from burnout.
An American Board & Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize Finalist 2019! Analytic interpretation is fundamental to the process of psychoanalysis, Jungian analysis, and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Interpretation is the medium by which the psychoanalytic art form is transmitted. What one chooses to say in analysis, why one chooses it, how one says it, when one says it; these are the building blocks of the interpretive process and the focus of Interpretation in Jungian Analysis: Art and Technique. This volume is the first of its kind in the literature of analytical psychology. Until now, the process of interpretation has been addressed only briefly in general Jungian texts. Interpretation in Jungian Analysis provides an in-depth exploration of the process, including the history of analytic technique, the role of language in analytic therapy, the poetics and metaphor of interpretation, and the relationship between interpretation and the analytic attitude. In addition, the steps involved with the creation of clear, meaningful, and transformative interpretations are plainly outlined. Throughout the book, clinical examples and reader exercises are provided to deepen the learning experience. The influence of the Jungian perspective on the interpretative process is outlined, as are the use of analytic reverie and confrontation during the analytic process. In addition to the historical, technical, and theoretic aspects of interpretation, this book also focuses on the artistic and creative elements that are often overlooked in the interpretive process. Ultimately, cultivating fluidity within the interpretive process is essential to engaging the depth and complexity of the psyche. Interpretation in Jungian Analysis will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists of all theoretical orientations and will be essential reading for students of analytical psychology.
Volume 14 of Progress in Self Psychology, The World of Self Psychology, introduces a valuable new section to the series: publication of noteworthy material from the Kohut Archives of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. In this volume, "From the Kohut Archives" features a selection of previously unpublished Kohut correspondence from the 1940s through the 1970s. The clinical papers that follow are divided into sections dealing with "Transference and Countertransference," "Selfobjects and Objects," and " Schizoid and Psychotic Patients." As Howad Bacal explains in his introduction, these papers bear witness to the way in which self psychology has increasingly become a relational self psychology - a psychology of the individual's experience in the context of relatedness. Coburn's reconstrual of "countertransference" as an experience of self-injury in the wake of unresponsiveness to the analyst's own selfobject needs; Livingston's demonstration of the ways in which dreams can be used to facilitate "a playful and metaphorical communication between analyst and patient"; Gorney's examination of twinship experience as a fundamental goal of analytic technique; and Lenoff's emphasis on the relational aspects of "phantasy selfobject experience" are among the highlights of the collection. Enlarged by contemporary perspectives on gender and self-experience and a critical examination of "Kohut, Loewald, and the Postmoderns," Volume 14 reaffirms the position of self psychology at the forefront of clinical, developmental, and conceptual advance.
The purpose of this text is to organize the voluminous material on empathy in a coherent and practical manner, filling a gap that exists in the current therapeutic literature. Empathy in Counseling and Psychotherapy: Perspectives and Practices comprehensively examines the function of empathy as it introduces students and practitioners to the potential effectiveness of utilizing empathic understanding in the treatment process. Employing empathy with full recognition of its strengths and limitations promotes sound strategies for enhancing client development. As an integral component of the therapeutic relationship, empathic understanding is indispensable for engaging clients from diverse backgrounds. This cogent work focuses on understanding empathy from a wide range of theoretical perspectives and developing interventions for effectively employing the construct across the course of treatment. The book also presents a new approach for integrating empathy through a Multiple Perspective Model in the therapeutic endeavor. Organized into three sections, the text addresses empathy in the following capacities: *historical and contemporary perspectives and practices in counseling and psychotherapy; *theoretical orientations in counseling and psychotherapy; and *a Multiple Perspective Model in counseling and psychotherapy. This widely appealing volume is designed for use in courses in counseling and therapy techniques, theories of counseling and psychotherapy, and the counseling internship, and is a valuable resource for counselors, psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other related fields of inquiry in the human services.
The contributors to Explorations in Self Psychology, volume 19 of the Progress in Self Psychology series, wrestle with two interrelated questions at the nexus of contemporary discussions of technique: How "authentic" and relationally invested should the self psychologically informed analyst be, and what role should self-disclosure play in the treatment process? The responses to these questions embrace the full range of clinical possibilities. Dudley and Walker argue that empathically based interpretation precludes self-disclosure whereas Miller argues in favor of authentic self-expression and against the self psychologist's frustrating attempt to "decenter" from frustration or anger. Consideration of the utility of a consistently empathic stance continues with Weisel-Barth's clinical presentation and the discussions that it elicits about management of her patient's primary destructiveness. Lenoff's critical rereading of Kohut's "Examination of the Relationship Between Mode of Observation and Theory" and Rieveschl & Cowan's "Selfhood and the Dance of Empathy" deepen still further a contemporary perspective on the nature (and advisability) of a consistently empathic stance in the face of interactive and enactive treatment challenges. Other timely self-psychological explorations examine the twinship selfobject experience and homosexuality; self-psychological work with adolescents; and Neville Symington's theory of narcissism. Contributions to applied analysis explore topics as diverse as an exchange of dreams between John Adams and Benjamin Rush; Mann's Death in Venice; the films of Ingmar Bergman; psychotherapy of the elderly; and disabilities in the sensory-motor integration in children. And Volume 19 concludes with Constance Goldberg's candid and enlightening reminiscence of Heinz Kohut, "a very complex man with whom to be in a relationship."
What kinds of questions do experienced clinicians ask themselves when meeting a new client for the first time? What are the main issues that must be explored to gain a basic grasp of each individual's unique psychology? How can clinical expertise be taught? From the author of Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, the volume takes clinicians step-by-step through developing a dynamic case formulation and using this information to guide and inform treatment decisions. Synthesizing extensive clinical literature, diverse psychoanalytic viewpoints, and empirical research in psychology and psychiatry, Nancy McWilliams does more than simply bring assessment to life - she illuminates the entire psychotherapeutic process.
Volume 13 provides valuable examples of the very type of clinically grounded theorizing that represents progress in self psychology. The opening section of clinical papers encompasses compensatory structures, facilitating responsiveness, repressed memories, mature selfobject experience, shame in the analyst, and the resolution of intersubjective impasses. Two self-psychologically informed approaches to supervision are followed by a section of contemporary explorations of sexuality. Contributions to therapy address transference and countertransference issues in drama therapy, an intersubjective approach to conjoint family therapy, and the subjective worlds of profound abuse survivors. A concluding section of studies in applied self psychology round out this broad and illuminating survey of the field.
The Theory and Practice of Psychoanalytic Therapy: Listening for the Subtext outlines the core concepts that frame the reciprocal encounter between psychoanalytic therapist and patient, taking the reader into the psychoanalytic therapy room and giving detailed examples of how the interaction between patient and therapist takes place. The book argues that the therapist must capture both nonverbal affects and unsymbolized experiences, proposing a distinction between structuralized and actualized affects, and covering key topics such as transference, countertransference and enactment. It emphasizes the unconscious meaning in the here-and-now, as well as the need for affirmation to support more classical styles of intervention. The book integrates object relational and structural perspectives, in a theoretical position called relational oriented character analysis. It argues the patient’s ways-of-being constitute relational strategies carrying implicit messages – a "subtext" – and provides detailed examples of how to capture this underlying dialogue. Packed with detailed clinical examples and displaying a unique interplay between clinical observation and theory, this wide-ranging book will appeal to psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and clinical psychologists in practice and in training.