Unbearable Affect

In this cohesive, dramatic, and highly readable book, the author establishes a roadmap for the diagnosis and psychotherapeutic treatment of psychotic disorders based on finding, understanding and reordering of unbearable affect. He provides concrete clinical advice, vivid examples, and crisp jargon-free descriptions of theoretical concepts and clinical techniques. Most of all, he demonstrates that it is possible for psychotic patients to take control of their conditions, rebuild family relationships, and establish themselves in the viable productive lives that they have long despaired of achieving.

Coen (training and supervising analyst, Columbia U. Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research) offers advice to psychoanalysts working with extremely difficult patients. His central premise is that both patients and therapists have difficulty tolerating intense affects (such as loving and hating) and that the clinician needs to "feel with and for his patient, over a prolonged time, what she finds so terrifying" (emphasis in original). Also stressed is the need for clinicians to confront their own fears and doubts about treatment. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The intersubjective perspective regards all psychological processes as emanating from personal interrelatedness. First presented by Robert D. Stolorow in his classic work Faces in a Cloud (1978), it is one of the most powerful concepts to be introduced into the post-Freudian era. In Worlds of Experience, Dr. Stolorow and two eminent colleagues elaborate on intersubjectivity, going beyond the clinical and theoretical questions of earlier work to explore the philosophical underpinnings of psychoanalytic theory and practice. The culmination of three decades of collaborative work, this book will be essential reading for academics, students, and clinicians.

Structures of Subjectivity: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Phenomenology and Contextualism, is a revised and expanded second edition of a work first published in 1984, which was the first systematic presentation of the intersubjective viewpoint – what George Atwood and Robert Stolorow called psychoanalytic phenomenology – in psychoanalysis. This edition contains new chapters tracing the further development of their thinking over the ensuing decades and explores the personal origins of their most essential ideas. In this new edition, Atwood and Stolorow cover the philosophical and theoretical assumptions of psychoanalysis and present a broad approach that they have designated phenomenological contextualism. This approach addresses personal subjective worlds in all their richness and idiosyncrasy and focuses on their relational contexts of origin and therapeutic transformation. Structures of Subjectivity covers the principles guiding the practice of psychoanalytic therapy from the authors' viewpoints and includes numerous detailed clinical case studies. The book will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, practitioners of psychotherapy, psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, and social workers. It will also be of interest to scholars and students with an interest in psychoanalytic theory and practice, and its philosophical premises.

Over the past decade, there has been a burgeoning of interest in understanding and treating borderline personality disorder, a disorder characterized by extreme emotional reactivity, impulsivity and serious interpersonal difficulties resulting in frequent loss of relationships. Individuals with borderline personality disorder comprise a substantial proportion of the psychiatric outpatient population, are often seen in emergency rooms and have major functional impairment (e.g. unemployment). Suicide occurs in 3-9% of the population. Furthermore, non-suicidal self injury (e.g. cutting without the intent to die), eating disorders and substance abuse are frequently seen in the context of borderline personality disorder. Not only do the individuals with the disorder suffer , their family members also experience distress and can feel burdened and overwhelmed. Once thought to be nonexistent or a 'grab bag' diagnosis, borderline personality disorder is now understood as a significant emotional disorder with its own neurobiological and psychosocial correlates. At the same time, the disorder is still poorly understood and stigmatized with limited resources available to the novice clinician and mental health professional trainees (e.g. psychiatry residents, psychology doctoral students, social work students). The aim of this primer on borderline personality disorder is to fill this void and provide an accessible, easy-to-use , clinically-oriented, evidenced-based guide for early stage clinicians. We present the most up to data about borderline personality disorder by leading experts in the field in a format accessible to trainees and professionals working with individuals with borderline personality disorder and their family members. The volume is comprehensive and covers the etiology of BPD, its clinical presentation and co-morbid disorders, genetics and neurobiology of BPD, effective treatment of BPD, the role of advocacy and special subpopulations (e.g.forensic)in the clinical management of BPD.

This book takes a painstaking look at developmental trauma as it manifests in group, individual, and combined psychotherapies, tracking the growth of non-abused individuals who have courageously addressed overwhelming childhood experiences to make sense of the chaos in their lives. The cumulative impact of repetitive stress, fear, and shame in childhood wreaks havoc on the developing brain, resulting in a life-long vulnerability to anxiety, despair, and dissociative moments that are often described as developmental trauma. Adverse childhood experiences are often overlooked by therapists. This book focuses specifically on the profound suffering of high-functioning private-practice patients who manifest developmental trauma from chronic shock, shame, and neglect. Adams offers a synthesis of diverse theoretical worlds in her study of adaptations to cumulative trauma, namely, relational psychoanalysis, the British school of object relations, trauma theory, neuroscience and interpersonal neurobiology, developmental psychopathology, and attachment theory. Using richly detailed clinical material, this book provides invaluably clear examples to illustrate the effects of disorganized states in infancy, making it essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and clinical psychologists working with traumatized patients.

This is a biography of Dick Price, the co-founder of Esalen Institute and the creator of Gestalt Practice.

Stolorow and his collaborators' post-Cartesian psychoanalytic perspective – intersubjective-systems theory – is a phenomenological contextualism that illuminates worlds of emotional experience as they take form within relational contexts. After outlining the evolution and basic ideas of this framework, Stolorow shows both how post-Cartesian psychoanalysis finds enrichment and philosophical support in Heidegger's analysis of human existence, and how Heidegger's existential philosophy, in turn, can be enriched and expanded by an encounter with post-Cartesian psychoanalysis. In doing so, he creates an important psychological bridge between post-Cartesian psychoanalysis and existential philosophy in the phenomenology of emotional trauma.