Psychoanalysis in Practice A Contemporary Approach for Psychotherapists

Part I: The Setting of Therapy  1. Establishing and Maintaining Boundaries with Patients: The Frame   2. Maintaining Boundaries Regarding Professional Fees  Part II: Some Important Concepts  3. Unconscious Communication  4. The importance of containment  5. Omnipotence, Helplessness and Idealization  Part III: Thinking and Non-thinking in Psychotherapy  6. Developing a thinking mind  7. Deadening and Enlivening  8. Action and Enactments  Part IV: Some Aspects of Being Therapeutic  9. Being Therapeutic  10. Hate and Love in the Countertransference  Chapter 11 Tuning in to the patient’s unconscious: Reflections on Rachael Peltz’s “Ways of hearing: Getting inside psychoanalysis”  Part V: Becoming a Therapist and Helping Others become Therapists  12 Some Thoughts on Teaching, Learning and Vulnerability

Biography

Paul Steinberg is a clinical professor at the Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia and training and supervising analyst in the Western Canada Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He has written Psychoanalysis in Medicine: Applying Psychoanalytic Thought to Contemporary Medical Care, and Psychoanalysis in Mental Health: Applying Psychoanalytic Thought to Contemporary Mental Health Practice, in addition to over 100 peer-review papers and book reviews and one book chapter.

'Paul Steinberg’s Applying Psychoanalytic Concepts to Contemporary, Psychotherapeutic Practice, is a rare gem. The book is written in everyday language cleansed of cliché or an over-abundance of technical terms. The thinking is at once disciplined and playful, always taking pleasure in the surprises he finds in the rich clinical experiences he presents. Steinberg describes the emotional and intellectual sensibility of the analytic therapist, the way he or she approaches transference, countertransference, the frame, aliveness and deadness of the sessions, acting out, and unconscious communication. Steinberg has an unusual ability to present his thinking and experience in a clear and highly utilizable way.'

Thomas H. Ogden, author most recently of What Alive Means and Coming to Life in the Consulting Room

 

'Paul Steinberg’s work is unique in being written to help psychotherapists who, having no background in psychodynamic approaches, nevertheless want to learn about how those ideas might be used in their work. Steinberg is formally trained as a psychoanalyst, but he came to psychoanalysis long after he had begun to do psychotherapy, and clearly he can still feel what it’s like for someone to encounter psychoanalytic ideas for the first time. He responds generously and expressively, helping the reader over and over again by offering his own clinical experience to illustrate what it is like to think and work psychoanalytically. If you are drawn to  psychodynamic approaches but have not known how to find your way into those ideas, this book really is for you. You will feel lucky to have found it. The same goes for anyone trying to feel their way into what it means to do psychoanalytic work.'

Donnel Stern, PhD, author of On Coming into Possession of Oneself: Transformations of the Interpersonal Field

 

 

'In his third book, Paul Steinberg continues to illustrate why a therapist’s sound grounding in contemporary psychoanalysis increases the likelihood of profound change in any given patient. Steinberg is one of the leading international voices arguing against symptom-oriented, one-size- fits-all therapies. He strongly and repeatedly underscores the analytic attitude that each patient is unique, each therapist is unique, each dyad is unique. Indeed, this is the only way that patients can feel truly known, and being seen and known lies at the heart of mutative action. Absorbing this book is likely to enhance the work of therapists of all stripes and levels of experience.'

Irwin Hirsch, PhD, Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, William Alanson White Institute

 

'Paul Steinberg invites us into the process of analytic treatment – the medium through which the words exchanged take on affective traction. This patient- specific analytic space is one of mutual discovery filled with experiences of closeness and alienation, novelty and repetition. He elaborates how the analyst’s immersion into the participant/observer state of mind facilitates the emergence of authenticity: depression reveals sadness, omnipotence allows for helplessness and rejection provocation uncovers longing. Together this journey enables a true internal voice to emerge – a personal process of Paul’s that he shares with us. The readers of this work will all be the beneficiary of his self and other path of discovery.'

Harvey Schwartz, Training and Supervising Analyst; Psychoanalytic Association of New York/ Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, Host of the IPA Podcast, Psychoanalysis On and Off the Couch