Body Words and the Analyst’s Use of Self Transforming the Unspeakable in Clinical Process

Foreword by Donnel B. Stern  1. Introduction  Reverie: In the Beginning  2. When the Analyst is Ill: Dimensions of Self-Disclosure  Reverie: A True Story  3. When the Crunch is a (K)not: A Crimp in Relational Dialogue  4. Passion, Responsibility, and "Wild Geese": Creating a Context for the Absence of Conscious Intentions  5. Narrative Writing and Soulful Metaphors: Commentary on Paper by Barbara Pizer by Donnel B. Stern  6. "Eva, Get the Goldfish Bowl": Affect and Intuition in the Analytic Relationship  7. From Black Hole to Potential Space: Discussion of Barbara Pizer's '"Eva, Get the Goldfish Bowl": Affect and Intitution in the Analytic Relationship" by Stuart A. Pizer  Reverie: A Motherless Child  8. Risk and Potential in Analytic Disclosure: Can the Analyst Make "The Wrong Thing" Right?  Reverie: I Wish That Life  9. The Heart of the Matter in Matters of the Heart: Power and Intimacy in Analytic and Couples Relationships  Reverie: I'll Never Forget  10. A Clinical Exploration of Moving Anger Forward: Intimacy, Anger, and Creative Freedom  Reverie: Sometimes People Have to   11. Maintaining Analytic Liveliness: "The Fire and the Fuel" of Growth and Change  Reverie: To Tell the Truth  12. Trauma, Dissociation, and Disorganized Attachment: A Clinical Collage Engaging Giovanni Liotti's Work  Reverie: English Is My Mother's Second Language  13. "Why Can't We Be Lovers?" When the Price of Love Is Loss of Love: Boundary Violations in Clinical Context  Reverie: Who Would Think  14. Not-Me: The Vicissitudes of Aging  Reverie: Whatever the Rewards of Childhood  15. Body Words: Transforming the Unspeakable in Clinical Process  16. Coda—Bodies and Embodiment, 1963: The Person of the Analyst  Final Reverie: There Must Not  

Biography

Barbara Pizer, EdD, ABPP, is faculty, personal and supervising analyst, and former board member of the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis; assistant clinical professor of Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School; associate editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues; and in private practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

'Barbara Pizer's book is riveting. Her detailed use of self is evocative and enriching. Her thinking, anchored in Body Words, is novel, deep, and compelling. She achieves an extraordinary depth of perspective in theory and practice, demonstrating an incredible ability to immerse herself in clinical challenges, to conceptualize them, and meet them. It's a must-read for all clinicians.' 

Hazel Ipp, PhD, chief editor emeritus, Psychoanalytic Dialogues; vice president, IARPP

'Open this book and enter a world of experience. As one of the masters of the practice and theory of Relational Psychoanalysis, Barbara Pizer conveys in exquisite detail how psychoanalysis moves and changes people's lives. She practices and teaches the art of engagement, where feeling and expression, whether verbal or not, are the embodied center of clinical work. You will feel immersed in the living moment of analytic work. More important, you will learn how the shared knots of repetition loosen and transform into a more open way of engaging and living creatively as well.' 

Jack Foehl, PhD, joint editor in chief, Psychoanalytic Dialogues; president, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute

'Pizer's book demonstrates her astute capacity to put the world of the patient-therapist relationship before us. Her innovative ideas for how to engage successfully in the dyad are perfect for both experienced and new clinicians. Body Words is an accurate, evocative expression of mind-brain-body connection crucial for a contemporary emphasis on nonlinear process and systems thinking. Finally, there is the poetry in Pizer's prose that her old readers have come to expect and new readers, dreading theory-heavy, unimaginative writing, will welcome.' 

Estelle Shane, PhD, training and supervising analyst and faculty member, Insitute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles, and the New Center for Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles