This book presents the unconscious mind as the product of interpersonal interaction—in its formation and in its growth and development across the life cycle. Many clinical examples illustrate the theory of the interpersonal unconscious and its application to individual psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, couple and family therapy, and child therapy, and to teaching mental health professionals nationally and internationally.
An exploration of how the unconscious is formed and functions by one of our most renowned experts on emotion and the brain. This book traces the evolution of the concept of the unconscious from an intangible, metapsychological abstraction to a psychoneurobiological function of a tangible brain. An integration of current findings in the neurobiological and developmental sciences offers a deeper understanding of the dynamic mechanisms of the unconscious. The relevance of this reformulation to clinical work is a central theme of Schore's other new book, Right Brain Psychotherapy.
A scientific take on the still-central therapeutic concept of “the unconscious.” More than one hundred years after Freud began publishing some of his seminal theories, the concept of the unconscious still occupies a central position in many theoretical frameworks and clinical approaches. When trying to understand clients’ internal and interpersonal struggles it is almost inconceivable not to look for unconscious motivation, conflicts, and relational patterns. Clinicians also consider it a breakthrough to recognize how our own unconscious patterns have interacted with those of our clients. Although clinicians use concepts such as the unconscious and dissociation, in actuality many do not take into account the newly emerging neuropsychological attributes of nonconscious processes. As a result, assumptions and lack of clarity overtake information that can become central in our clinical work. This revolutionary book presents a new model of the unconscious, one that is continuing to emerge from the integration of neuropsychological research with clinical experience. Drawing from clinical observations of specific therapeutic cases, affect theory, research into cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychological findings, the book presents an expanded picture of nonconscious processes. The model moves from a focus on dissociated affects, behaviors, memories, and the fantasies that are unconsciously created, to viewing unconscious as giving expression to whole patterns of feeling, thinking and behaving, patterns that are so integrated and entrenched as to make them our personality traits. Topics covered include: the centrality of subcortical regions, automaticity, repetition, and biased memory systems; role of the amygdala and its sensitivity to fears in shaping and coloring unconscious self-systems; self-narratives; therapeutic enactments; therapeutic resistance; defensive systems and narcissism; therapeutic approaches designed to utilize some of the new understandings regarding unconscious processes and their interaction with higher level conscious ones embedded in the prefrontal cortex.
Edgar A. Levenson is a key figure in the development of interpersonal psychoanalysis whose ideas remain influential. Interpersonal Psychoanalysis and the Enigma of Consciousness builds on his previously published work in his key areas of expertise such as interpersonal psychoanalysis, transference and countertransference, and the philosophy of psychoanalysis, and sets his ideas into contemporary context. Combining a selection of Levenson’s own writings with extensive discussion and analysis of his work by Stern and Slomowitz, it provides an invaluable guide to how his most recent, mature ideas may be understood and applied by contemporary psychoanalysts in their own practice. This book explores how the rational algorithm of psychoanalytic engagement and the mysterious flows of consciousness interact; this has traditionally been thought of as dialectical, an unresolvable duality in psychoanalytic practice. Analysts move back and forth between the two perspectives, rather like a gestalt leap, finding themselves listening either to the "interpersonal" or to the "intrapsychic" in what feels like a self-state leap. But the interpersonal is not in dialectical opposition to the intrapsychic; rather a manifestation of it, a subset. The chapters pick up from the themes explored in The Purloined Self, shifting the emphasis from the interpersonal field to the exploration of the enigma of the flow of consciousness that underlies the therapeutic process. This is not the Freudian Unconscious nor the consciousness of awareness, but the mysterious Jamesian matrix of being. Any effort at influence provokes resistance and refusal by the patient. Permitted a "working space," the patient ultimately cures herself. How that happens is a mystery wrapped up in the greater mystery of unconscious process, which in turn is wrapped into the greatest philosophical and neurological enigma of all—the nature of consciousness. Interpersonal Psychoanalysis and the Enigma of Consciousness will be highly engaging and readable; Levenson’s witty essayist style and original perspective will make it greatly appealing and accessible to undergraduate and postgraduate students of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, as well as practitioners in these fields.
This book explores the unconscious in psychoanalysisusing cross-disciplinary input from the cultural, social and linguistic perspectives. This book is the first contemporary collection applying the various perspectives from within the psychoanalytic discipline. It covers the unconscious from three main perspectives: the metaphysical, including links with quantum mechanics and Jung's thought; the socio-relational, drawing on ideas from politics, inter-generational trauma and the interpersonal; and the linguistic, drawing on notions of the social construct of language and hermeneutics. Throughout the history of psychoanalysis, theorists have wrestled with the ubiquitousness and diverse nature of the unconscious. This collection is an account of the contemporary psychoanalytic struggle to understand and work with this quintessential, defining, and foundational object of psychoanalysis. This book is primarily of interest to practicing clinicians and trainees. It is also of significant interest to any academic professionals and students who adapt psychoanalytic thought in their studies in the humanities, including literature, philosophy, and the social sciences.
In The Interpersonal Tradition: The Origins of Psychoanalytic Subjectivity, Irwin Hirsch offers an overview of psychoanalytic history and in particular the evolution of Interpersonal thinking, which has become central to much contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice. This book of Hirsch’s selected papers provides an overview of his work on the topic over a thirty year period (1984-2014), with a new introductory chapter and a brief updating prologue to each subsequent chapter. Hirsch offers an original perspective on clinical psychoanalytic process, comparative psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory, particularly explicating the many ways in which Interpersonal thinking is absolutely central to contemporary theory and practice. Each chapter is filled with theoretical explication and clinical examples that illustrate the degree to which the idiosyncratic person of each psychoanalyst inevitably plays a significant role in both analytic praxis and analytic theorizing. Key to this perspective is the recognition that each unique individual analyst is an inherently subjective co-participant in all aspects of analytic process, underscoring the importance that analysts maintain an acute sensitivity to the participation of both parties in the transference-countertransference matrix. Overall, the book argues that the Interpersonal psychoanalytic tradition, more than any other, is responsible for the post-modern and Relational turn in contemporary psychoanalysis. Based on a range of seminal papers that outline how the Interpersonal psychoanalytic tradition is integral to understanding much of contemporary psychoanalytic thought, this book will be essential reading for practitioners and students of psychoanalysis.
The social unconscious and its manifestations in group analysis are the focus of this important new book of Earl Hopper's selected papers. Drawing on sociology, psychoanalysis and group analysis, he argues that groups and their participants are constrained unconsciously by social, cultural and political facts and forces.
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.
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.
The latest groundbreaking, interdisciplinary work from one of our most eloquent and significant writers about emotion and the brain. An exploration into the adaptive functions of the emotional right brain, which describes not only affect and affect regulation within minds and brains, but also the communication and interactive regulation of affects between minds and brains. This book offers evidence that emotional interactions reflect right-brain-to-right-brain affective communication. Essential reading for those trying to understand one-person psychology as well as two-person psychology relationships, whether clinical or otherwise.
