Informed Consent To Psychoanalysis

The goal of this book is to shed psychoanalytic light on a concept—informed consent—that has transformed the delivery of health care in the United States. Examining the concept of informed consent in the context of psychoanalysis, the book first summarizes the law and literature on this topic. Is informed consent required as a matter of positive law? Apart from statutes and cases, what do the professional organizations say about this? Second, the book looks at informed consent as a theoretical matter. It addresses such questions as: What would be the elements of a robust informed consent in psychoanalysis? Is informed consent even possible here? Can patients really understand, say, transference or regression before they experience them, and is it too late once they have? Is informed consent therapeutic or countertherapeutic? Can a “process view” of informed consent make sense here? Third, the book reviews data on the topic. A lengthy questionnaire answered by sixty-two analysts reveals their practices in this regard. Do they obtain a statement of informed consent from their patients? What do they disclose? Why do they disclose it? Do they think it is possible to obtain informed consent in psychoanalysis at all? Do they think the practice is therapeutic or countertherapeutic, and in what ways? Do they think there should or should not be an informed consent requirement for psychoanalysis? The book should appeal above all to therapists interested in the ethical dimensions of their practice.

The distinguished contributors to Confidentiality probe the ethical, legal, and clinical implications of a deceptively simple proposition: Psychoanalytic treatment requires a confidential relationship between analyst and analysand. But how, they ask, should we understand confidentiality in a psychoanalytically meaningful way? Is confidentiality a therapeutic requisite of psychoanalysis, an ethical precept independent of psychoanalytic principles, or simply a legal accommodation with the powers that be? In wrestling with these questions, the contributors to Confidentiality are responding to a professional, ethical, and political crisis in the field of mental health. Psychotherapy - especially long-term psychotherapy in its psychoanalytic variants - has been undermined by an erosion of personal privacy that has become part of our cultural zeitgeist. The heightened demand for public transparency has forced caregivers from all walks of professional life to submit to increasing bureaucratic regulation. For the contributors to this collection, the need for confidentiality is centrally involved in the relationship of the psychotherapeutic professions both to society and to the law. No less importantly, the requirement of confidentiality brings a clarifying perspective to debates within the psychotherapeutic literature about the relationship of theory to practice. It thereby provides a framework for shaping a set of ethical principles specifically adapted to the psychotherapeutic, and especially to the psychoanalytic, relationship. Linking general issues of privacy to the intimate details of psychotherapeutic encounter, Confidentiality will serve as a basic guide to a wide range of professionals, including lawyers, social scientists, philosophers, and, of course, psychotherapists. Therapy patients, policy makers, and the wider public will also find it instructive to know more about the special protected conditions under which one can better come to "know thyself."

The second edition of this groundbreaking text represents a complete departure from the structure and format of its predecessor. Though still exhaustive in scope and designed to provide a knowledge base for a broad audience -- from the beginning student to the seasoned analyst or academician -- this revision emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of psychoanalytic thought and boldly focuses on current American psychoanalysis in all its conceptual and clinical diversity. This approach reflects the perspective of the two new co-editors, whose backgrounds in linguistics and social anthropology inform and enrich their clinical practice, and the six new section editors, who themselves reflect the diversity of backgrounds and thinking in contemporary American psychoanalysis. The book begins with Freud and his circle, and the origins of psychoanalysis, and goes on to explore its development in the post-Freud era. This general introduction orients the reader and helps to contextualize the six sections that follow. The most important tenets of psychoanalysis are defined and described in the "Core Concepts" section, including theories of motivation, unconscious processes, transference and countertransference, defense and resistance, and gender and sexuality). These eight chapters constitute an excellent introduction to the field of psychoanalysis. The "Schools of Thought" section features chapters on the most influential theories -- from object relations to self psychology, to attachment theory and relational psychoanalysis, and includes the contributions of Klein and Bion and of Lacan. Rather than making developmental theory a separate section, as in the last edition, developmental themes now permeate the "Schools of Thought" section and illuminate other theories and topics throughout the edition. Taking a more clinical turn, the "Treatment and Technique" section addresses critical subjects such as transference and countertransference; theories of therapeutic action; process, interpretation, and resistance, termination and reanalysis; combined psychoanalysis and psychopharmacotherapy, child analysis, ethics, and the relationship between psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy. A substantive, utterly current, and meticulously referenced section on "Research" provides an in-depth discussion of outcome, process, and developmental research. The section entitled "Psychoanalysis and Other Disciplines" takes the reader on a fascinating tour through the many fields that psychoanalysis has enriched and been enriched by, including the neurosciences, philosophy, anthropology, race/ethnicity, literature, visual arts, film, and music. A comprehensive Glossary completes this indispensable text. The Textbook of Psychoanalysis is the only comprehensive textbook of psychoanalysis available in the United States. This masterful revision will both instruct and engage those who are learning psychoanalysis, those who practice it, and those who apply its theories to related disciplines. Though always controversial, this model of the human psyche still provides the best and most comprehensive insight into human nature.

Winner of the 2020 Gradiva Award The Psychoanalytic Zero: A Decolonizing Study of Therapeutic Dialogues is written from the unique perspective of a Western-trained Asian psychoanalyst and applies principles of Eastern philosophy to understand the psychoanalytic relationship, psychoanalytic processes, and their uses—and limitations—for alleviating human suffering. Bringing a unique Eastern perspective to a previously Western-dominated discipline and framed within the current relational and ethical trends in psychoanalysis, the book enables readers to develop a language for understanding an Eastern ethical viewpoint and explore how this language can change our awareness of psychoanalytic practice and human suffering. Chapters are devoted to the Eastern concepts of nothingness, emptiness, surrender, sincerity, silence and narrative, and issues including existential "guilt of being," trauma, contingency, informed consent, the sense of being human, and uncertainty. Discussions are illustrated and illuminated through vivid recreations and careful elaboration of therapeutic case studies with traumatized patients. The studies demonstrate the process by which patients regain a sense of being human. This enriched perspective will, it is hoped, help the analyst treat traumatized patients who are unable to relate to others, and who do not experience themselves as being human. The Psychoanalytic Zero will enrich an analyst’s sensitivity to the appearance of the moment without context—the psychoanalytic zero—which opens infinite opportunities for continued growth in a psychoanalytic relationship. It will be of great appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists interested in self-psychological, intersubjective, and relational theories.

The comprehensive "The American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Psychoanalysis" is the only textbook of its kind in this distinguished field. Both a clinical guide and a reference book, this essential text focuses not only on psychoanalytic theory and treatment but also on developmental issues, research, and the many ways in which theoretical psychoanalysis intersects with contiguous disciplines. The editors, recognized experts in the field, have brought together a remarkable 39 distinguished contributors whose broad-based interests make this textbook a unique reference for interdisciplinary psychoanalysis. The textbook is organized into 6 parts: - "Part I: Core Concepts"--Introduces basic concepts, such as motivation, the dynamic unconscious, the importance of early relationships, internalization, object relations theory, intersubjectivity, and sex/gender. - "Part II: Developmental Theory"--Addresses the developmental orientation in contemporary psychoanalysis, developmental theories and their relationship with other disciplines, attachment theory/research, and the psychoanalytic understanding of mental disorders. - "Part III: Treatment and Technique"--Defines what a psychoanalyst is and how he or she is trained; and presents virtually every treatment and technique, from transference/countertransference, treatment theories and their technical consequences, and interpretation, resistance, and process to termination/re-analysis, psychopharmacology, child analysis, and ethics. - "Part IV: Research"--Describes the burgeoning research in psychoanalysis, focusing on outcome, process, developmental, and conceptual research. - "Part V: History of Psychoanalysis"--Traces the history of psychoanalysis, showing how individual personality, world events, and cultural differences have led to varieties of discoveries and perspectives. - "Part VI: Psychoanalysis and Related Disciplines"--Details the relevance of interdisciplinary sources to Freud's ideas and the influences of psychology, anthropology, philosophy, literature, the arts, politics, international relations, and neuroscience. Written with a minimum of professional jargon, this in-depth work also includes an extensive glossary and name and subject indexes. No other psychoanalysis textbook is as comprehensive in scope with such a broad array of contributors as "The American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Psychoanalysis." This up-to-date reference will find a wide audience not only among psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, educators, and students but also among professionals in allied disciplines such as psychology, anthropology, literature, the arts, philosophy, politics, and neuroscience. The editors and contributors to this remarkable compendium demonstrate that psychoanalytic approaches--at times in combination with psychopharmacological therapy--continue to play a vital role in the treatment of specific psychiatric disorders.

In this second edition of Endings & Beginnings (Routledge, 2006), Herbert J. Schlesinger explores endings and beginnings within psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy; both the obvious main endings and beginnings of any course in treatment, and the many little endings and beginnings that permeate analysis. The second edition contains new chapters including one on transference and counter-transference as sources of information about the process of therapy and as sources of difficulty in ending. It deals especially with the impact of prospective ending on the therapist, which if not understood and well handled, might interfere with working through and impede termination, if not ending itself. Another new chapter deals with the difficulties in terminating with especially narcissistic patients. One of the main criticisms against psychoanalysis and the psychotherapies derived from it is that it lacks criteria for when the patient has had enough. Herbert J. Schlesinger shows how we may view the process as a series of episodes each with an ending and possibly with a new beginning. He presents the way patients signal, even before they are aware of it, that ending is "in the air," and how it organizes how they experience the therapy. If alerted, the therapist can make use of these signals to locate self and patient in the process. So informed, the therapist is better able to discern when the therapy should end and help the patient work through the issues of separation and loss to terminate the treatment constructively. All patients tend to end psychotherapy in the way they end all other relationships. In several chapters on the problems related to severe regression, therapists can learn how to help vulnerable patients, for whom attachment is problematic, deal with separation non-traumatically. In Endings & Beginnings 2nd Edition, the theory of the continuous experience of ending and beginning and the array of landmarks that parse the clinical process are distinct advances to the technique of psychoanalysis and the psychotherapies derived from it. Schlesinger offers many clinical examples of ending and beginning with their technical problems and solutions. This contribution to the technique of ending and beginning psychotherapy electively will be useful to practicing psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, and to undergraduate and post-graduate students in clinical psychology, psychiatry and social work.

In this first-of-kind book, senior psychoanalysts from around the world offer personal reflections on their own training, what it was like to become a psychoanalyst, and what they would like most to convey to the candidate of today. With forty-two personal letters to candidates, this edited collection helps analysts in training and those recently entering the profession to reflect upon what it means to be a psychoanalytic candidate and enter the profession. Letters tackle the anxieties, ambiguities, complications, and pleasures faced in these tasks. From these reflections, the book serves as a guide through this highly personal, complex, and meaningful experience and helps readers consider the many different meanings of being a candidate in a psychanalytic institute. Perfect for candidates and psychoanalytic educators, this book inspires analysts at all levels to think, once again, about this impossible but fascinating profession and to consider their own psychoanalytic development.