On Coming into Possession of Oneself Transformations of the Interpersonal Field

Synopsis

This book is Donnel B. Stern’s latest contribution to the kind of understanding of the psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic process offered by field theory.Stern anchors his understanding of therapeutic action in the freedom of both patient and analyst to create a meaningful experience with minimum inhibition. The field’s capacity to generate meaning—and thus to make possible fully realized human living—rows from its freedom to respond spontaneously to the feelings, wants, and needs of its participants. To whatever extent this spontaneity is diminished, as it is in unconscious mutual enactment, we can be sure that some part of the field is frozen or otherwise rigidified. This position serves as the foundation of the psychoanalysis that Stern practices. The analyst aims to feel their way into compromises in the field, and then do whatever they can to grasp and dissolve them, knowing that they will have to be visited repeatedly, and dissolved again. These insights into interpersonal and relational field theory lead to descriptions of clinical interventions that are focused on the moment-to-moment emotional experience of both the patient and the analyst.With valuable contributions to theory and emotionally immediate clinical vignettes, this book is essential for all psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists wishing to understand how the analyst’s interventions grow from the analyst’s emotional involvement in the clinical process.

Book details

Series:

Psychoanalysis in a New Key Book Series

Author:

Donnel B. Stern

ISBN:

9781040100738

Related ISBNs:

9781032688879, 9781040100677, 9781032688916, 9781032688893

Publisher:

Taylor & Francis

Pages:

416

Reading age:

Not specified

Includes images:

No

Date of addition:

2024-09-04

Usage restrictions:

Copyright

Copyright date:

2025

Copyright by:

Donnel B. Stern 

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Categories:

Nonfiction, Psychology