Kohut Loewald And The Postmoderns

In Kohut, Loewald, and the Postmoderns, Judith Teicholz, using the contemporary critique of Kohut and Loewald as a touchstone of inquiry into the current status of psychoanalysis, focuses on a select group of postmodern theorists whose recent writings comprise a questioning subtext to Kohut's and Loewald's ideas. Acutely aware of the important differences among these theorists, Teicholz nonetheless believes that their respective contributions, which present psychoanalysis as an interactive process in which the analyst's own subjectivity plays a constitutive role in the joint construction of meanings, achieve shared significance as a postmodern critique of Kohut and Loewald. She is especially concerned with the relationship - both theoretically and technically -between Kohut's emphasis on the analyst's empathic resonance with the analysand's viewpoint and affect, and the postmodern theorists' shared insistence on the expression of the analyst's own subjectivity in the treatment situation. Her analysis incorporates fine insight into the tensions and ambiguities in Kohut and Loewald, whose work ultimately emerges as a way station between modern and postmodern viewpoints, and her appreciation of Kohut and Loewald as transitional theorists makes for an admirably even-handed exposition. She emphasizes throughout the various ways in which Kohut and Loewald gave nascent expression to postmodern attitudes, but she is no less appreciative of the originality of postmodern theorists, who address genuine lacunae in the thought and writings of these exemplars of an earlier generation. Teicholz's examination of what she terms two overlapping "partial revolutions" in psychoanalysis - that of Kohut and Loewald on one hand and of the postmoderns on the other - throws an illuminating searchlight on the path psychoanalysis has traveled over the last quarter of the 20th century.

In Kohut, Loewald, and the Postmoderns, Judith Teicholz, using the contemporary critique of Kohut and Loewald as a touchstone of inquiry into the current status of psychoanalysis, focuses on a select group of postmodern theorists whose recent writings comprise a questioning subtext to Kohut's and Loewald's ideas. Acutely aware of the important differences among these theorists, Teicholz nonetheless believes that their respective contributions, which present psychoanalysis as an interactive process in which the analyst's own subjectivity plays a constitutive role in the joint construction of meanings, achieve shared significance as a postmodern critique of Kohut and Loewald. She is especially concerned with the relationship - both theoretically and technically -between Kohut's emphasis on the analyst's empathic resonance with the analysand's viewpoint and affect, and the postmodern theorists' shared insistence on the expression of the analyst's own subjectivity in the treatment situation. Her analysis incorporates fine insight into the tensions and ambiguities in Kohut and Loewald, whose work ultimately emerges as a way station between modern and postmodern viewpoints, and her appreciation of Kohut and Loewald as transitional theorists makes for an admirably even-handed exposition. She emphasizes throughout the various ways in which Kohut and Loewald gave nascent expression to postmodern attitudes, but she is no less appreciative of the originality of postmodern theorists, who address genuine lacunae in the thought and writings of these exemplars of an earlier generation. Teicholz's examination of what she terms two overlapping "partial revolutions" in psychoanalysis - that of Kohut and Loewald on one hand and of the postmoderns on the other - throws an illuminating searchlight on the path psychoanalysis has traveled over the last quarter of the 20th century.

In this book, an eminent psychoanalytic theoretician, clinician, educator, and researcher investigates the similarities and differences, and the evolving relationship between psychoanalysis and the dynamic psychotherapies. This book is the most systematic study of the theory and practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy that I know, and at the same time a profound and original review of leading contemporary developments of controversies in the field of psychoanalysis at large.-Otto F. Kernberg, M.D. The author's depth of experience and intimate knowledge of both psychotherapy and psychoanalysis have led him to produce a brilliant and illuminating history of their interaction. It is a fascinating book to read and indispensable as a reference work-everyone in the field should possess and absorb this lucid and scholarly work.-Joseph Sandler, PH.D, M.D., Emeritus Professor of Psychoanalysis, University of London Wallerstein's book stands alongside Reuben Fine's The History of Psychoanalysis as a major contribution. For informed readers.-Library Journal Wallerstein presents a comprehensive, precise, scholarly, and well-documented historical review and study of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy...The work includes a good review of leading contemporary developments, including attention to social constructivist paradigms, and recognizes that disputes are extant and far from being settled. An important and well-referenced book, it is the best systematic study of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis available.-Choice

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.

Reinhold Niebuhr's analysis of the human condition inevitably led him into a dialogue with psychology. This book brings Niebuhr into dialogue with Freud, Horney, Rogers, Kohut, Jung, and other key psychological thinkers. It argues that Niebuhr was both an astute critic of some forms of psychology, and a great contributor to the human sciences.

Beyond Postmodernism identifies ways in which psychoanalysis has moved beyond the postmodern debate and discusses how this can be applied to contemporary practice. Roger Frie and Donna Orange bring together many of the leading authorities on psychoanalytic theory and practice to provide a broad scope of psychoanalytic viewpoints and perspectives on the growing interdisciplinary discourse between psychoanalysis, continental philosophy, social theory and philosophy of mind. Divided into two parts, Psychoanalytic Encounters with Postmodernism and Psychoanalysis Beyond Postmodernism, this book: elaborates and clarifies aspects of the postmodern turn in psychoanalysis furthers an interdisciplinary perspective on clinical theory and practice contributes to new understandings of theory and practice beyond postmodernism. Beyond Postmodernism: New Dimensions in Clinical Theory and Practice provides a fresh perspective on the relationship between psychoanalysis and postmodernism and raises new issues for the future. It will be of interest to practicing psychoanalysts and psychologists as well as students interested in psychoanalysis, postmodernism and philosophy.

Volume 17 of Progress in Self Psychology, The Narcissistic Patient Revisited, begins with the next installment of Strozier's "From the Kohut Archives": first publication of a fragment by Kohut on social class and self-formation and of four letters from his final decade. Taken together, Hazel Ipp's richly textured "Case of Gayle" and the commentaries that it elicits amount to a searching reexamination of narcissistic pathology and the therapeutic process. This illuminating reprise on the clinical phenomenology Kohut associated with "narcissistic personality disorder" accounts for the volume title. The ability of modern self psychology to integrate central concepts from other theories gains expression in Teicholz's proposal for a two-tiered theory of intersubjectivity, in Brownlow's examination of the fear of intimacy, and in Garfield's model for the treatment of psychosis. The social relevance of self psychology comes to the fore in an examination of the experience of adopted children and an inquiry into the roots of mystical experience, both of which concern the ubiquity of the human longing for an idealized parent imago. Among contributions that bring self-psychological ideas to bear on the arts, Frank Lachmann's provocative "Words and Music," which links the history of music to the history of psychoanalytic thought in the quest for universal substrata of psychological experience, deserves special mention. Annette Lachmann's consideration of empathic failure among the characters in Shakespeare's Othello and Silverstein's reflections on Schubert's self-states and selfobject needs in relation to the specific poems set to music in his Lieder round out a collection as richly broad based as the field of self psychology itself.