Silence And Silencing In Psychoanalysis

This book is the first comprehensive treatment in recent decades of silence and silencing in psychoanalysis from clinical and research perspectives, as well as in philosophy, theology, linguistics, and musicology. The book approaches silence and silencing on three levels. First, it provides context for psychoanalytic approaches to silence through chapters about silence in phenomenology, theology, linguistics, musicology, and contemporary Western society. Its central part is devoted to the position of silence in psychoanalysis: its types and possible meanings (a form of resistance, in countertransference, the foundation for listening and further growth), based on both the work of the pioneers of psychoanalysis and on clinical case presentations. Finally, the book includes reports of conversation analytic research of silence in psychotherapeutic sessions and everyday communication. Not only are original techniques reported here for the first time, but research and clinical approaches fit together in significant ways. This book will be of interest to all psychologists, psychoanalysts, and social scientists, as well as applied researchers, program designers and evaluators, educators, leaders, and students. It will also provide valuable insight to anyone interested in the social practices of silence and silencing, and the roles these play in everyday social interactions.

While we know that psychotherapy works, there is hearty debate about what makes it work. In the past, rival arguments have maintained that psychotherapy proves effective because of the treatment approach, patient contributions, or the therapeutic relationship. Psychotherapy Skills and Methods That Work argues that clinical skills and methods also play a crucial role and that what therapists do has major consequences for improving practice. Psychotherapy Skills and Methods That Work is the result of a multiyear, interorganizational Task Force commissioned to identify, compile, and disseminate the research evidence and clinical practices on psychotherapist skills and methods used across theoretical orientations. Edited by renowned scholars Clara E. Hill and John C. Norcross, this book provides original research reviews on the effectiveness of 27 specific psychotherapy skills and methods, including affirmation, self-disclosure, role induction, between-session homework, empathic reflections, mindfulness and acceptance, emotion regulation, and cognitive restructuring. Each chapter on a therapy skill or method features clinical examples, diversity considerations, training implications, and bulleted therapeutic practices, while the final chapter summarizes the research evidence for the effectiveness of these skills/methods and emphasizes implications for clinical training and practice. Forcefully demonstrating what therapists do to help clients change and live more effective lives, Psychotherapy Skills and Methods That Work will serve as a go-to guide for psychotherapy practitioners of all persuasions and professions, as well as graduate students and psychotherapy researchers.

In the face of considerable scepticism over the function and effectiveness of psychoanalysis, Lena Ehrlich demonstrates how analysis is unique in its potential to transform patients at an emotionally cellular level by helping them access and process long-standing conflicts and traumatic experiences. Using detailed clinical vignettes, the author illustrates that when analysts practice from the inside out, i.e. consider that external obstacles to initiating and deepening an analysis inevitably reflect analysts’ fears of their internal world and of intimacy, they become better able to speak to patients’ long-term suffering. This book, free from psychoanalytic jargon, stands out in its ability to help readers feel more effective, confident, and optimistic about practicing psychoanalysis by providing insights and recommendations about beginning and deepening analysis and sustaining oneself as an analyst over time. It will appeal to both beginners and experienced analysts, as well as supervisors, educators, and those interested in the workings of their minds and in building more intimate relationships.

This book promotes a Lacanian approach to silence, arguing that Lacanian psychoanalysis is distinctive for putting a high value on both silence and language. Unlike other disciplines and discourses the authors do not treat silence as a mystical-impossible beyond, at the cost of demoting the value of language and thought. Rather than treating silence with awe and wonder, this book puts silence to work, and it does so in order to deal with the inevitable alienation that comes with becoming speaking-beings. This illuminating book will be of great interest to scholars of Lacan and the psychosocial, as well as more broadly to philosophers and linguists alike.

Psychoanalysis, History, and Radical Ethics: Learning to Hear explores the importance of listening, being able to speak, and those who are silenced, from a psychoanalytic perspective. In particular, it focuses on those voices silenced either collectively or individually by trauma, culture, discrimination and persecution, and even by the history of psychoanalysis. Drawing on lessons from philosophy and history as well as clinical vignettes, this book provides a comprehensive guide to understanding the role of trauma in creating silence, and the importance for psychoanalysts of learning to hear those silenced voices.

A qualitative analysis of societal silences, demonstrating how the unsaid directs social action and shapes individual and collective lives.

This book promotes a Lacanian approach to silence, arguing that Lacanian psychoanalysis is distinctive for putting a high value on both silence and language. Unlike other disciplines and discourses the authors do not treat silence as a mystical-impossible beyond, at the cost of demoting the value of language and thought. Rather than treating silence with awe and wonder, this book puts silence to work, and it does so in order to deal with the inevitable alienation that comes with becoming speaking-beings. This illuminating book will be of great interest to scholars of Lacan and the psychosocial, as well as more broadly to philosophers and linguists alike.

This book takes a comprehensive look at the understanding and treatment of child sexual abuse in psychoanalytic theory and practice, and in society as a whole. This book will demonstrate how prophetic Ferenczi's ideas about sexual abuse and trauma were, and how relevant they are for contemporary psychoanalysis and society. Sexual abuse, its traumatic effect and the harm caused to children, youth and adults will be described in the neglect of confronting sexual abuse by psychoanalysis and society. This neglect will be discussed in chapters about the abuse of children by religious leaders, students by teachers, youth in sports by coaches, and aspiring actors by authorities in the entertainment industry. It covers key topics such as why there has been silence about abuse in psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic theories and practices that can be counterproductive or even harmful, case studies of abuse in the wider community, and how psychoanalysis as a profession can do better in its understanding and treatment of child sexual abuse both in psychoanalytic treatment, and in its interaction with other parts of society. This book will appeal to all psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as scholars interested the history of psychoanalysis.