Relational Freedom: Emergent Properties of the Interpersonal Field addresses the interpersonal field in clinical psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, especially the emergent qualities of the field. The book builds on the foundation of unformulated experience, dissociation, and enactment defined and explored in Stern's previous, widely read books.

Stern never considers the analyst or the patient alone; all clinical events take place between them and involve them both. Their conscious and unconscious conduct and experience are the field's substance. We can say...

On the Lyricism of the Mind: Psychoanalysis and Literature explores the lyrical dimension (or the lyricism) of the psychic space. It is not presented as an artistic disposition, but rather as a universal psychic quality which enables the recovery and recuperation of the self. The specific nature of human lyricism is defined as the interaction as well as the integration of two psychic modes of experience originally defined by the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion: The emergent and the continuous principles of the self.

Dana Amir elaborates Bion's general notion of an interaction between the...

In this refreshingly honest and open book, Sandra Buechler looks at therapeutic process issues from the standpoint of the human qualities and human resourcefulness that the therapist brings to each clinical encounter. Her concern is with the clinical values that shape the psychoanalytically oriented treatment experience. How, she asks, can one person evoke a range of values--curiosity, hope, kindness, courage, sense of purpose, emotional balance, the ability to bear loss, and integrity--in another person and thereby promote psychological change? For Buechler, these core values, and the...

Needed Relationships and Psychoanalytic Healing is both a personal analytic credo and a multidimensional approach to thinking about clinical interaction. The book s central theme is that of analytic needed relationships the science and art of co-creating unique, evolving relational experiences fitted to each patient s implicit therapeutic aims and needs.

Steven Stern argues that, while we need psychoanalytic theories to "grow the receptors and processors" necessary to sense, understand, and connect with our patients, these often tend to frame the therapist s...

Unknowable, Unspeakable, and Unsprung delves into the mysteries of scandalous behavior- behavior that can seem shocking, unfathomable, or self-destructive - that is outrageous and offensive on the one hand, yet fascinating and exciting on the other. In the process, this anthology asks fundamental questions about the self: what the self is allowed to be and do, what must be disallowed, and what remains unknown.

Clinicians strive to know their patients selves, and their own, as fully as possible, while also facing the inevitable riddles these selves present. Covering...

Unknowable, Unspeakable, and Unsprung delves into the mysteries of scandalous behavior- behavior that can seem shocking, unfathomable, or self-destructive - that is outrageous and offensive on the one hand, yet fascinating and exciting on the other. In the process, this anthology asks fundamental questions about the self: what the self is allowed to be and do, what must be disallowed, and what remains unknown.

Clinicians strive to know their patients selves, and their own, as fully as possible, while also facing the inevitable riddles these selves present. Covering...

In The Fallacy of Understanding (1972) and The Ambiguity of Change (1983), Edgar Levenson elaborated the many ways in which the psychoanalyst and the patient interact - unconsciously, continuously, inevitably. For Levenson, it was impossible for the analyst not to interact with the patient, and the therapeutic power of analysis derived from the analyst's ability to step back from the interactive embroilment (and the mutual enactments to which it led) and to reflect with the patient on what each was doing to, and with, the other.

Invariably, Levenson found, the...

We have entered the age of perversion, an era in which we are becoming more like machines and they more like us. The Age of Perversion explores the sea changes occurring in sexual and social life, made possible by the ongoing technological revolution, and demonstrates how psychoanalysts can understand and work with manifestations of perversion in clinical settings.

Until now theories of perversion have limited their scope of inquiry to sexual behavior and personal trauma. The authors of this book widen that inquiry to include the social and political sphere, tracing...

We have entered the age of perversion, an era in which we are becoming more like machines and they more like us. The Age of Perversion explores the sea changes occurring in sexual and social life, made possible by the ongoing technological revolution, and demonstrates how psychoanalysts can understand and work with manifestations of perversion in clinical settings.

Until now theories of perversion have limited their scope of inquiry to sexual behavior and personal trauma. The authors of this book widen that inquiry to include the social and political sphere, tracing...