Analytic Listening In Clinical Dialogue

Analytic Listening in Clinical Dialogue focuses on the work of four leading clinicians as they assess how their unconscious basic assumptions impact their clinical work. Using the case study of a seven-year-old boy, the authors evaluate a videotaped psychoanalytic first interview and exchange their mutual clinical approaches. Their discussions uncover the way that unconscious basic assumptions arise from the core of one’s personality and act as the pillars that support primary- and secondary-process thinking. These fundamental models of thought and emotion result in convictions which play a key role in the processes of understanding, evaluating, classifying, anticipating and regulating. The authors show how an ‘analytic listening’ approach can also be used to good effect in supervisions and intervisions, as it provides a path out of the domain of ‘being right’ into a space of what is shared as well as what is different. They argue that this method allows an analyst’s own blind spots to be reduced. Translated from the original German, Analytic Listening in Clinical Dialogue will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and psychologists.

'Joseph Breuer's celebrated patient, Anna O., designated psychoanalysis to be a "talking cure". She was correct insofar as psychoanalysis does place verbal exchange at the center stage. However, the focus upon the patient's and therapist's speaking activities diverted attention from how the two parties listen to each other. Psychoanalysis is a listening and talking cure. Both elements are integral to clinical work. Listening with no talking can only go so far. Talking without listening can mislead and harm. And yet, the listening end of the equation has received short shrift in analytic literature. This book aims to rectify this problem by focusing upon analytic listening. Taking Freud's early description of how an analyst ought to listen as its starting point, the book traverses considerable historical, theoretical, and clinical territory. The ground covered ranges from diverse methods of listening through the informative potential of the countertransference to the outer limits of our customary attitude where psychoanalytic listening no longer helps and might even be contraindicated.'- Salmon Akhtar, from his Introduction

Salman Akhtar is a Professor of Psychiatry, a Training and Supervising Analyst, a member of numerous editorial boards, winner of many awards, including the highly prestigious Sigourney Award, a writer of several hundred articles, a poet, and the author or editor of over one hundred books. A modern-day Renaissance man, his elegant writing is simultaneously scholarly and literary and brings a light touch to profound material. Phoenix Publishing House is proud to present his most inspiring works in a stunning ten-volume hardback set, fit to grace the shelves of collectors and libraries with its high-quality finish.

Technology in Mental Health focuses on the responsible integration of technology into therapy in a world affected by COVID. Author Jessica Stone discusses the pandemic’s effects on the mental health field, historical fundamentals, and possible future implications. Chapters also explore legal and ethical considerations as well as educational and supervision needs. Seasoned and new clinicians alike will find valuable information in these pages as they progress from traditional to modern to post-COVID mental health treatment.

Can school teach us to master life? This book confronts what the author sees as an ongoing trend in many Western democracies where citizens are increasingly being held accountable for their health and happiness. The author believes that the introduction of life skills in school shows a tendency to place more responsibility on the individual rather than address fundamental societal flaws that really should be solved politically. It examines how such responsibility to psychologically deal with these problems affects our mental health and quality of life. This book questions the fundamentals of the life mastery curriculum where we might be risking the creation of just another arena where children have to perform, challenging readers to evaluate more closely the premises, consequences and limitations of life mastery. The book, one of the first to question ‘life mastery’ as an achievable goal with critical reviews of the 21st century skills movement, will be of interest to psychologists, school counsellors, teachers, students, politicians, and any reader evaluating school curriculums in relation to the decline in youth and adolescent mental health.

Transference in Institutional Work with Psychosis and Autism presents Pierre Delion’s extensive experience in psychiatric institutions, focusing on the concept of the transferential constellation. Delion first discusses the pioneering work of François Tosquelles at the Saint Alban psychiatric hospital, which enabled psychoanalytic treatment to be applied in cases of severe psychopathologies. The book then explains how the transferential constellation can provide a deeper and more effective understanding of a patient’s needs by engaging all caregivers within an organisation over the course of the patient’s treatment history. Delion describes how regular meetings of all the team participants allow them to express different and even divergent views of the patient and to appreciate their complementary contributions to the institution. The transferential constellation is presented as an important development in the history of patient-centered psychiatric care and a touchstone for its ongoing humanistic development. Transference in Institutional Work with Psychosis and Autism will be of great interest to psychiatrists and psychotherapists in practice and in training. It will also be key reading for other practitioners and caregivers working in mental health institutions.

This book explores the phenomenon of creativity and creation from a psychoanalytic point of view, focusing on understanding the psychoemotional dynamics underlying artistic creative activities, such as theatre, literature, and painting. Throughout, Delgado considers these works of art through a Bionian, Kleinian, and Freudian lens. He uses three major psychoanalytic models of the creative process, two of them classic: the first, Freudian, based on the theory of conflict between impulse and defense, the result of the effort to manage an excessive drive activity, and in which the concept of sublimation is central; the second, Kleinian, based on the attachment theory, in which creative effort corresponds to an attempt to repair the damage done to the object or to the self; and the third, more recent, affiliated with the more expanded attachment relationship theory, based on W. Bion’s theory of thinking, and emphasizing the continent’s capacity for psyche and the oscillation between schizo-paranoid and depressive positions. With illustrations throughout, this book will be vital reading for anyone interested in the intersection of creativity, the Arts, and psychoanalysis.

Treatment for Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors is the first book to establish the theory and practice of a psychodynamic approach to treating body-focused repetitive behavior disorders (BFRBDs), such as hair pulling, skin picking, and cheek, lip and cuticle biting. Chapters set out a new framework for understanding and treating BFRBDs, one grounded in attachment theory and neurobiological research.