Psychotherapy After Kohut
A Textbook of Self Psychology
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Book Description
Hailed as "a superb textbook aimed at introducing psychoanalytic self psychology to students of psychotherapy" (Robert D. Stolorow), Psychotherapy After Kohut is unique in its grasp of the theoretical, clinical, and historical grounds of the emergence of this new psychotherapy paradigm. Lee and Martin acknowledge self psychology's roots in Freud's pioneering clinical discoveries and go on to document its specific indebtedness to the work of Sandor Ferenczi and British object relations theory. Proceeding to readable, scholarly expositions of the principal concepts introduced by Heinz Kohut, the founder of self psychology, they skillfully explore the further blossoming of the paradigm in the decade following Kohut's death. In tracing the trajectory of self psychology after Kohut, Lee and Martin pay special attention to the impact of contemporary infancy research, intersubjectivity theory, and recent empirical and clinical findings about affect development and the meaning and treatment of trauma.
Table of Contents
Introduction
- The Magical Covenant
- Freud as Clinician
- Freud's Mental Apparatus
- Drive and Conflict theory
- Ferenczi, the Dissident
- The British School
- Metatheory: Theory about Psychotherapy Theory
- Empathic Understanding
- Narcissism
- Mirror Transference
- Idealizing Transference
- Twinship and Merger Transferences
- Selfobject Experiences
- The Self System
- Conflict and Deficit Theories
- Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy
- Transference as Organizing Principle
- Structuralization
- Negative Therapeutic Reactions
- Affects
- Trauma
- Mutual Influence Theory
- Toward a General Theory
Author(s)
Biography
Ronald R. Lee, J. Colby Martin
Reviews
"The sensitivity and understanding they bring to the complex history of self psychology and its constructs is unsurpassed in my experience. With true scholarly (as well as empathic) depth they are able to explicate the theoretical and clinical relevance to psychoanalysis of the self-psychological views on transference, intersubjectivity, trauma, and - of course - empathy....In a long career of training and supervising, I have encountered few books that attempt the close contextual coverage Lee and Martin have provided. In addition, in the psychoanalytic literature, even fewer offer the clinical lucidity and readability found in this volume."
Gene Bocknek, Contemporary Psychology