A watershed in the articulation of the relational psychoanalytic paradigm, this volume offers a rich overview of issues currently being addressed by clinicians and theoreticians writing from a variety of complementary relational viewpoints. Chapter topics cover the roots of the relational orientation in early psychoanalytic thinking, the impact of relational consideration on developmental theory, relational conceptions of "self" and "other," and clinical applications of relational perspectives.

The papers featured in Attachment and Sexuality create a dense tapestry, each forming a separate narrative strand that elucidates different configurations of the relationship between attachment and sexuality. As a whole, the volume explores the areas of convergence and divergence, opposition, and integration between these two systems. It suggests that there is a bi-directional web of influences that weaves the attachment and sexual systems together in increasingly complex ways from infancy to adulthood. The volume’s unifying thread is the idea that the attachment system, and particularly the degree of felt security, or lack thereof in relation to early attachment figures, provides a paradigm of relatedness that forms a scaffold for the developmental unfolding of sexuality in all its manifestations. Such manifestations include infantile and adult, masturbatory and mutual, and normative and perverse. Also central to the papers is the idea that the development of secure attachment is predicated, in part, on the development of the capacity for mentalization, or the ability to envision and interpret the behavior of oneself and others in terms of intentional mental states, including desires, feelings, beliefs, and motivations. Topics discussed in the book will help to shape the direction and tenor of further dialogues in the arena of attachment and sexuality.

This is a new kind of anthology. More conversation than collection, it locates the psychic and the social in clinical moments illuminating the analyst's struggle to grasp a patient's internal life as voiced through individual political, social, and material contexts. Each chapter is a single detailed case vignette in which aspects of race, gender, sexual orientation, heritage, ethnicity, class – elements of the sociopolitical matrix of culture – are brought to the fore in the transference-countertransference dimension, demonstrating how they affect the analytic encounter. Additionally, discussions by three senior analysts further deconstruct patients' and analysts' cultural embeddedness as illustrated in each chapter. For the practicing clinician as well as the seasoned academic, this highly readable and intellectually compelling book clearly demonstrates that culture saturates subjective experience – something that all mental health professionals should keep in mind. 

Product Description: This book examines the role of British object relations theory in order to explore our understanding and treatment of depression. It challenges current conceptualizations of depression while simultaneously discussing the complex nature of depression, its long-lasting and chronic implications and the susceptibility to relapse many may face...read more

Product Description: Francis of Assisi as Artist of the Spiritual Life applies modern psychological understanding to a historical person. While most such studies have sought a comprehensive personality profile, this work focuses on one aspect ― Francis' imagination ― and seeks greater insight into the imaginatively inspired spiritual vision of St...read more

Product Description: Personal relationships concern us all, they are essential to our becoming who we are and constitute our most vital experience of what it is like to be alive and human. This book proposes a new approach to understanding who we are based on the work of Ronald Fairbairn, John Macmurray and Ian Suttie, whose ideas provide a positive perspective on our future collective possibilities...read more

The ways in which an individual (the subject) relates to and perceives other people (his or her 'objects') has always been a preoccupation of psychoanalysis and in recent years a plethora of concepts has grown up in the literature. In this ground-breaking study, Meir Perlow sets out to clarify the changing meanings of the different concepts from context to context, discussing in depth the theoretical issues underlying them. The book begins with an historical survey of how mental objects have been understood in the various 'schools' of psychoanalysis as they have developed. These include Freud and his associates, the object-relations approaches of Klein, Fairbairn and Bion, orientations derived from ego psychology such as those of Schafer and Kernberg, and the self orientation of Winnicott and Kohut. In Part Two the author discusses the conceptual and clinical issues involved in the major differences between the concepts. Finally, in Part Three he delineates three basic meanings of the concepts of mental objects as they have emerged in the literature and shows how they are related to ongoing issues in contemporary psychoanalysis. This long overdue clarification of a complex area, with its wide ranging and imaginative grasp of the different theories about objects, will be an invaluable reference for all psychoanalysts and psychologists.

Intended as a supplementary book for use in theory of psychotherapy/counselling courses, this book presents the main ideas and approaches of two major, modern theories of the person: object relations and the psychology of the self. The author provides an overview of such writers as W.R.D. Fairbairn, D.W. Winnicott, Otto Kernberg, Melanie Klein, Margaret S. Mahler, and Heinz Kohut, and illustrates their work with case studies, as well as summarizing, comparing and contrasting their work.

Product Description: Fairbairn's work is increasingly influential in research on infant development, child abuse, and the borderline,schizod, and narcissistic disorders. This volume is the first to bring together the works of those who have studied Fairbairn's ideas most closely...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This text illustrates how object relations theory can be operationalised, tested empirically and updated on the basis of studies in psychology. It offers summaries of research in object relations theory, including specific recommendations for application to psychotherapy.

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