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Bibliography & Bookstore

In this bookstore section, you will find a list of writings and publications important to the self psychology community. You will also find links to the sites where you can purchase the books of your interest.

Bibliography:

Click here for a thematically orgaized bibliography created by Jill R. Gardner


Forms of Intersubjectivity in Infant Research and Adult Treatment

by Beatrice Beebe, Steven Knoblauch, Judith Rustin and Dorienne Sorter

With new discussions by Theodore Jacobs and Regina Pally

Purchase

from Other Press, publisher

Adult psychoanalysis has approached the study of intersubjectivity by concentrating primarily on the verbal dialogue, an explicit mode of communication. Infant research, on the other hand, focuses on nonverbal communication and implicit modes of action sequences, operating largely out of awareness, such as interactions of gaze, facial expression, and body rhythms. This book proposes that an integration of these two approcahes is essential to a deeper understanding of the theraputic action.

The authors use a dyadic systems model of self- and interactive regulation as a lens for compariing diverse theories of intersubjectivity, both in adults and infants. Building on the definition of intersubjectivity in infancy as correspondence and matching of expressions, the authors offer an expanded view of the presymbolic origins of intersubjectivity. They address the place of interactive regulation, problems with the concept of matching, the roles of self-regulation and of difference, and the balance of self- and interactive regulation. An adult treatment of early trauma is described through detailed clinical case material illustrating both the verbal narrative and the implicit “action dialogue” ooperating largely outside of awareness.

This book inlucdes new discussions by Theodore Jacobs, arguing that nonverbal communication is vitally important to psychanalysis, and by Regina Pally, arguing that aspects of this book have parallels in neuroscience.


Making Sense Together: The Intersubjective Approach to Psychotherapy
by Peter Buirski and Pamela Haglund

Purchase

from Jason Aronson, Publisher
or Purchase from Amazon.com.

As in raising children, in which each unique parent and child pair emerges from the ongoing, mutually influencing relationship, so it is with therapists and patients. Peter Buirski and Pamela Haglund argue that intersubjectivity is founded on two assumptions: First, our moment-by-moment experience of ourselves and the world emerges within a dynamic, fluid context of others; and, second, that we can never observe things as they exist in isolation.

It follows, then, that therapy is not a search for some objective truth, but what is most helpful is the quality of the relationship constructed in therapy, the personal engagement of patient and therapist. Practicing intersubjectively produces an understanding and appreciation of process. Time pressures or goal-directedness do not promote unfolding and illuminating.

Patients are striving for health, attempting to correct disappointing, destructive, or traumatizing experiences with their original caregivers, and long for an antidote to ward off such painful affects as shame or self-loathing. From the intersubjective perspective, resistance, or attempts to thwart the therapist’s efforts, may be seen as healthy striving for self-protection. Demonstrating these points with vivid clinical examples, Buirski and Haglund discuss the key aspects of the relational model and offer clear and practical guidelines for therapists.


Practicing Intersubjectively

by Peter Buirski

Purchase

from Jason Aronson, Publisher
or Purchase
from Amazon.com.

Practicing Intersubjectively describes how the intersubjective systems perspective informs, shapes and guides the psychotherapeutic process. Using extensive clinical case material, Buirski illustrates the way an intersubjective systems sensibility informs and enriches clinical practice. The intersubjective systems perspective views each treatment as exquisitely context sensitive. This means that the person who comes for therapy would present differently to different therapists and the two of them would construct different processes. Therapists themselves are not interchangeable, and the intersubjective field that the two participants create together would be quite different from the field created by any other pair. Practicing Intersubjectively, with the focus on attuning and articulating to the contextual construction of personal worlds of experience enables a different therapy process to unfold than occurs in traditional 1-person, authority based treatment approaches and is uniquely suited to working with people from diverse cultural backgrounds and those suffering from such challenging concerns as trauma and prejudice.


Misunderstanding Freud

by Arnold Goldberg, MD

Purchase from Other Press, Publisher.

This book is a self psychologist’s view of the disparate schools of psychoanalysis. It makes a claim for the centrality of interpretation as a vehicle for transforming our ubiquitous misunderstandings of each other into psychoanalytic understanding. The chapters range from a discussion of neurobiology to a comparison of Heinz Kohut and Martin Heidigger. In its effort to undo the dualisms that infect psychoanalysis such as man vs. brain, subject vs. object, etc., it makes a claim for a postmodern freedom for the field of analysis.


Please note: the following book is in Italian

Heinz Kohut, Introspezione ed empatia. Raccolta di scritti (1959-1981)
A cura di Anna Carusi

(Heinz Kohut, Introspection and Empathy. Collected writings 1959-1981

edited by Anna Carusi)

Purchase from Bollati Boringhieri, Publisher.

This book is a collection of the most important writings on empathy by Heinz Kohut. It is a very valuable guide to better understand Kohut’s view on empathy and his progressive clarification of its methodological importance and of its clinical use.

The editor, who has verified the importance of empathy in her own personal analytic experience, has written an extensive introduction that shows how Kohut has developed a discussion on empathy that took place in Europe since the beginning of the Twentieth Century. The editor illutrates Kohut’s role in the mainstream of psychoanalysis in the U.S., and underlines the most relevant aspects of Kohut’s empathy.

An English unpublished copy of this book is available under request. For further information about the English version, please email Anna Carusi.


Transforming Aggression: Psychotherapy of the Difficult-to-Treat Patient
by Frank Lachmann, PhD

Purchase
from Rowman Littlefield.

Dr. Lachmann distinguishes between reactive and eruptive aggression. Reactive aggression, such as outrage, antagonistic outbursts, and cold withdrawal, refers to a range of responses to frustration, deprivation, or injured self esteem. However, aggression may erupt blatantly and apparently spontaneously as illustrated at the extreme in the actions of murderers and serial killers. On a more modest scale, the transformation of eruptive aggression is considered as to its transformation in the course of psychotherapy, as well as in life. Through detailed illustrations drawn from clinical work these transformations are discussed.


Transforming Narcissism: Reflections on Empathy, Humor, and Expectations
by Frank Lachmann, PhD

Purchase from Routledge, Publisher

Using Kohut’s seminal paper “Forms and Transformations of Narcissism” as a springboard, Frank Lachmann updates Kohut’s proposals for contemporary clinicians. Transforming Narcissism: Reflections on Empathy, Humor, and Expectations draws on a wide range of contributions from empirical infant research, psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic practice, social psychology, and autobiographies of creative artists to expand and modify Kohut’s proposition that archaic narcissism is transformed in the course of development or through treatment into empathy, humor, creativity, an acceptance of transience and wisdom.

He asserts that empathy, humor, and creativity are not the goals or end products of transformations, but are an intrinsic part of the ongoing therapist-patient dialogue throughout treatment. The transformative process is bidirectional, impacting both patient and therapist, and their affect undergoes transformation – for example from detached to intimate – and narcissism or self-states are transformed secondarily as a consequence of the affective interactions. Meeting or violating expectations of emotional responsivity provides a major pathway for transformation of affect.

For beginning therapists, Transforming Narcissism presents an engaging approach to treatment that incorporates the therapeutic action of these transformations, but also leaves room for therapists to develop styles of their own. For more experienced therapists, it fills a conceptual and clinical gap, provides a scaffold for crucial aspects of treatment that are often unacknowledged (because they are not “analytic”), or are dismissed and pejoratively labeled “countertransference.” Most importantly, Lachmann offers a balance between therapeutic spontaneity and professional constraint. Focused and engaging, Transforming Narcissism provides a bridge from self psychology to a rainbow of relational approaches that beginning and seasoned therapists can profitably traverse in either direction.


Psychotherapy After Kohut: A Textbook of Self Psychology
by Ronald R. Lee, and J. Colby Martin

Purchase
from Routledge, Publisher

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.

“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


Five Kohutian Postulates: Psychotherapy Theory from an Empathic Perspective

by Ronald R. Lee, Angie Rountree, and Sally McMahon

Purchase from Rowman & Littlefield, Publisher

In comparison with the traditional notion of science as generalizable and predictive knowledge, Five Kohutian Postulates presents psychotherapy as a science of the unique. It uses the philosopher Imre Lakatos’ emphasis on research programs that organize around a central postulate and auxiliary postulates to explicate Heinz Kohut’s “self-psychology.” Kohut’s psychotherapy theory entails four auxiliary postulates that are interlinked to the central postulate of empathic understanding, and to each other. The main chapters illustrate how these postulates function as orienting stars in theoretical space to foster a firm psychotherapeutic identity, and to concurrently foster the inclusion of complementary ideas from other psychotherapy theories. These chapters also reveal how self-psychology exemplifies Lakatos’s idea that the most valuable scientific theory is regenerative. The last chapter points to the need for post-modern psychoanalytic psychotherapy to take seriously the idea of a professional commitment to the patient.

“Anyone looking for a thorough and comprehensive review of psychoanalytic self psychology need search no further. The authors of Five Kohutian Postulates have clearly combed the literature of self psychology, followed every tributary that might make the principles of self psychology more coherent and relevant, and buttressed their own conclusions with clinical examples that are both interesting and intriguing. Although self psychology has long left behind a single and/or singular set of ideas, Lee, Roundtree, and McMahon allow the reader enough latitude to both agree and disagree so that one can readily grasp how the self psychology of today is a complex gathering of ideas resting upon a set of firm guiding principles presented by these authors.”
Arnold Goldberg, Rush University Medical Center


How To Bounce Back When You Think You Can’t: The P.R.I.D.E. Factor – For Adults, Parents, Teachers and All Those Who Care for Children (or For The Child Within Themselves)
by Carol Ann Munschauer, Ph.D. and Dave Hood

Purchase

from Authorhouse.com.

“In this deeply moving book Carol Munschauer and Dave Hood nudge contemporary psychoanalytic research out of the consulting room and gently transform it into a parental sensibility that not only fosters children’s unique growth and development, but also infuses us with innovative ways to revitalize our lives in the face of obstacles, tragedy, and the bumps and bruises of everyday life. Far from being another pop psychology book, the authors introduce novel and elegant metaphors that allow us to see, hear, and experience our children’s and our own actions and thoughts through new and expanding lenses – creatively, empathetically, and humanely. Munschauer and Hood write eloquently and their everyday case histories, as well as their own histories, resonate with our deepest life concerns. It is the only book of its kind that imbues life with optimism, hope and renewal while being solidly rooted in sound clinical theory.”
-Richard Geist, Ed. D., Faculty, Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis and Harvard Medical School


My Mother’s Eyes: Holocaust Memories of a Young Girl
by Anna Ornstein, with art by Stewart Goldman

Purchase from Emmis Books.

Auschwitz survivor Anna Ornstein recalls the tragedies of the
Holocaust – and the small moments of grace that gave her the strength to
endure – in My Mother’s Eyes, a triumphant testament to the human
spirit.

After immigrating to the U.S. as a young woman, Anna seldom spoke of the horrors she had experienced during the war. In time, as her family blossomed and grandchildren filled her home for the holidays, her daughter asked her to share some of her painful Holocaust memories as part of a Seder gathering. Over the course of the next 25 years, Anna added to this annual Passover tradition with another deeply personal recollection each year. The result, My Mother’s Eyes, is the moving account of how one woman survived – against all odds – with the fullness of her love, dreams and ambitions intact.

Award-winning artist Stewart Goldman paired his powerful images with Anna’s moving words to create a limited-edition gallery work, From Slavery to Deliverance. Available now for the first time as a book, My Mother’s Eyes bears witness to the faith, courage and tenacity of the human spirit.

Dr. Anna Ornstein is an Auschwitz survivor, professor of child psychiatriatry at Harvard University, and professor emeritus of child psychology at the University of Cincinnati. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Stewart Goldman is an award-winning artist and teacher of international renown. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States, the Ukraine and Germany for over four decades. He retired from the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 2001, where he was a professor of painting. Born and educated in Philadelphia, Stewart has lived in Cincinnati since 1968.


Guide to Psychoanalytic Developmental Theories
Joseph Palombo, Harold K. Bendicsen & Barry J. Koch

Purchase from Amazon.

As the foundational theory of modern psychological practice, psychoanalysis and its attendant assumptions predominated well through most of the twentieth century. The influence of psychoanalytic theories of development was profound and still resonates in the thinking and practice of today’s mental health professionals. Guide to Psychoanalytic Developmental Theories provides a succinct and reliable overview of what these theories are and where they came from. Ably combining theory, history, and biography it summarizes the theories of Freud and his successors against the broader evolution of analytic developmental theory itself, giving readers a deeper understanding of this history, and of their own theoretical stance and choices of interventions. Along the way, the authors discuss criteria for evaluating developmental theories, trace persistent methodological concerns, and shed intriguing light on what was considered normative child and adolescent behavior in earlier eras.

Each major paradigm is represented by its most prominent figures such as Freud’s drive theory, Erikson’s life cycle theory, Bowlby’s attachment theory, and Fonagy’s neuropsychological attachment theory. For each, the Guideprovides:

  • Biographical information
  • A conceptual framework
  • Contributions to theory
  • A clinical illustration or salient excerpt from their work

The Guide to Psychoanalytic Developmental Theories offers a foundational perspective for the graduate student in clinical or school psychology, counseling, or social work. Seasoned psychiatrists, analysts, and other clinical practitioners also may find it valuable to revisit these formative moments in the history of the field.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface/Acknowledgments

Introduction

Section I: Drive Theory

Chapter 1.   Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Section II: Ego Psychological Theories

Chapter 2.   Heinz Hartmann (1894-1970)

Chapter 3.   Anna Freud (1895-1982)

Chapter 4.   Rene Spitz (1887-1974)

Chapter 5.   Peter Blos (1904-1997)

Chapter 6.   Stanley I. Greenspan (1941- )

Section III: Object Relations Theories

Chapter 7.   Melanie Klein (1882-1960)

Chapter 8.   Donald Winnicott (1896-1971)

Chapter 9.   Margaret Mahler (1897-1985)

Chapter 10.   Otto Kernberg (1928- )

Section V: Life Cycle Theory

Chapter 11.   Erik Erikson (1902-1994)

Section IV: Interpersonal Theory

Chapter 12.   Harry Stack Sullivan (1892-1949)

Section VI: Theories of the Self

Chapter 13.   Daniel Stern (1934- )

Chapter 14.   Heinz Kohut (1913-1981) *

Section VII: Attachment Theories

Part 1: Traditional Attachment Theories

Chapter 15.   John Bowlby (1907-1990)

Chapter 16.   Mary Ainsworth (1913-1999)

Part 2: Neuropsychological Attachment theories:
The return to psychoanalysis


Chapter 17.   Allan Schore (1943- )

Chapter 18.   Peter Fonagy (1952- )

Chapter 19.   Conclusion

Appendix A   Stages or Phases of Development

Appendix B   Comparative Chart of Psychoanalytic Developmental Theories

Appendix C   Who Analyzed who

* Since Kohut never proposed a systematic developmental theory, the model we offer in this chapter is one that Palombo has inferred and reconstructed from Kohut’s entire work.


The Dancing Self: Creativity, Modern Dance, Self Psychology and Transformative Education
by Carol M. Press, Ed.D.

Purchase from Carol Press’s website.
Published by Hampton Press, 2002.

“In The Dancing Self Dr. Press eloquently describes how the choreographer/dancer engages the physical world (time, space, substance) to intertwine subjectivity and objectivity in a mutually transformative process. Her insights into the self-restorative function of art are profound and she illustrates her thesis with a vivid analysis of the life of one of our finest choreographers, Paul Taylor. The Dancing Self is one of the best analytic works on creativity which I have read in recent years. Dancers will learn much about the psychology of their craft. Therapists will gain an appreciation of the power of the body and spirit in the life of the self.”
-George Hagman, LCSW. Faculty of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis and the Training and Research Institute for Self Psychology, New York City


Heinz Kohut and the Psychology of the Self
by Allen Siegel

Purchase from Amazon.com.
Published by Routledge, 1996.

Heinz Kohut’s work represents an important departure from the Freudian tradition of psychoanalysis. As one of the founders of the ‘self psychology’ movement in America, he had an instrumental role in one of the most important developments in psychoanalysis since Freud. Based his practice on the belief that narcissistic vulnerabilities play a significant part in the suffering that brings people for treatment, Kohut evolved an understanding of the theraputic setting, applicable to both psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. However, as Kohut’s works were written predominantly for a psychoanalytic audience, they are often difficult to interpret. Proposing that in order to grasp fully the evolution of Kohut’s ideas, one must know something about the man and the milieu in which he lived, Dr. Allen Siegel incorporates biographical detail from Kohut’s life to aid in the understanding his works. Also included are examples from Siegel’s own practice, illustrating ways in which Kohut’s innovative theories can be applied to other forms of treatment.


The Narcissism of Empire: Loss Rage and Revenge in Thomas De Quincey, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling and Isak Dinesen

by Diane Simmons

Purchase from Sussex Academic Press.
Published by Sussex Academic Press, 2006.

Widely read in the age of British imperialism and still popular today, the five writers studied here have allowed millions to participate vicariously in the imperial project. Yet all of these writers, so instrumental in popularizing the imperial agenda of power and dominance, bore deep emotional scars and as adults bolstered their fragile psychic states through fantasies of empire. While soldiers and politicians may know to bury or at least camouflage their fears and desires, inner fantasy is the necessary ingredient of literature, and popular fiction often offers the opportunity to probe the mind of an age.

The connection between childhood loss and the desire for imperial escape, power and dominance is illuminated by De Quincey’s mad screeds against the Chinese as both terrifyingly powerful and laughably weak, while Stevenson’s romances, though written from an invalid’s bed, are credited with “selling” the idea of empire as manly adventure. Conan Doyle’s tales of a Britain menaced at home by imperial blowback are models of Great Power paranoia that resonate today, and Kipling’s stories of imperial Britain grow increasingly grandiose as childhood’s psychic wounds are re-opened. Finally, Dinesen portrays plantation life in British East Africa as a gentle romance in which displaced African “squatters” serve as loyal and adoring retainers, providing the aristocratic aura for which the author yearns. It is sometimes said that, “Love’s loss is empire’s gain,” and for these writers, Simmons shows, empire presented a magnificent opportunity to compensate for childhood calamity.


Trauma and Human Existence: Autobiographical, Psychoanalytic, and Philosophical Reflections
by Robert D. Stolorow

Purchase from Routledge, Publisher

Trauma and Human Existence interweaves two themes central to emotional trauma: The first pertains to the contextuality of emotional life in general and of the experience of emotional trauma in particular. The second pertains to the recognition that the possibility of emotional trauma is built into the basic constitution of human existence. This volume traces how the two themes interconnect. Whether or not this constitutive possibility will be brought lastingly into the foreground of our experiential world depends on the relational contexts in which we live. Taken as a whole, the book exhibits the unity of the deeply personal, the theoretical, and the philosophical in the understanding of emotional trauma and the place it occupies in human existence.

“In his new book, Trauma and Human Existence: Autobiographical, Psychoanalytic, and Philosophical Reflections, Robert Stolorow has accomplished a minor miracle, presenting for the reader a theoretically complex, philosophically strong, and yet almost unbearably sad and humane understanding of traumatic experience. The book is short, thoroughly engaging, and highly personal. It successfully portrays the overwhelming, all-encompassing, and ever-enduring effects of tragic loss, using the premature death of his young wife some sixteen years ago to illustrate how the event forever colors his own experience. The poignant nature of his deeply personal subject does not detract from the theoretical and philosophic basis of Stolorow’s explanation, but, rather, renders it all the more powerful and comprehensible. Anyone reading this book must take away from it not only a heightened appreciation for the uses of philosophical-psychoanalytic investigation and integration, but as important, a greater understanding of one’s own private life in which traumatic loss surely plays its central organizing role.”
-Estelle Shane, Ph.D., President-Elect, International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology


World, Affectivity, Trauma: Heidegger and Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis
by R. D. Stolorow

Purchase from Routledge, Publisher

Stolorow and his collaborators’ post-Cartesian psychoanalytic perspective – intersubjective-systems theory – is a phenomenological contextualism that illuminates worlds of emotional experience as they take form within relational contexts. After outlining the evolution and basic ideas of this framework, Stolorow shows both how post-Cartesian psychoanalysis finds enrichment and philosophical support in Heidegger’s analysis of human existence, and how Heidegger’s existential philosophy, in turn, can be enriched and expanded by an encounter with post-Cartesian psychoanalysis. In doing so, he creates an important psychological bridge between post-Cartesian psychoanalysis and existential philosophy in the phenomenology of emotional trauma.

“In this short and readable book, psychoanalyst and philosopher Robert Stolorow demonstrates how Heidegger’s existential philosophy enriches modern psychological thought and how contemporary psychoanalysis enriches Heidegger’s existential philosophy. Stolorow and his collaborators have developed a contemporary post-Cartesian version of psychoanalysis known as intersubjective-systems theory, which is distinguished by its emphasis on phenomenology, hermeneutics, and contextualism, and that illuminates the rich relationality of authentic existing. Stolorow brilliantly elucidates the use of Heidegger’s philosophy and places his fall into Nazism within the context of an examination of the salient themes that dominated Heidegger’s personal psychological world, including the theme of emotional trauma, and of how these motifs left their imprint on both his philosophy and his version of Nazism. We are left with both an enriched understanding of the mutual influence of philosophy and psychoanalysis and insight into the personal subjectivity underlying all systems of thought. One can no longer be interested in either modern philosophy or psychoanalysis without a thorough familiarity with Robert Stolorow’s contributions.”

-Lewis Aron, Ph.D., New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis


Worlds of Experience: Interweaving Philosophical and Clinical Dimensions in Psychoanalysis
by R. D. Stolorow, G. E. Atwood, & D. M. Orange

Purchase from Amazon.com.

Building on their vision of interweaving worlds of experience, the authors decisively challenge the long-accepted Cartesian doctrine of the isolated mind and move toward a fully contextual psychoanalysis that recognizes the role of relatedness in the making of all experience. The profound theoretical and therapeutic implications of this philosophical shift are amply illuminated with respect to such important clinical phenomena as unconscious processes, psychological trauma, and experiences of personal annihilation.

“A remarkable achievement… WORLDS OF EXPERIENCE bridges the wide gap between creative developments in contemporary philosophy and psychoanalysis. But even more important for the practicing analyst is the way that this book raises our consciousness of the significance of affects, context, and perspective in the intersubjective systems in which patient and analyst – in fact, all of us – live.”
-Joseph Lichtenberg, M.D., Editor-in-Chief, Psychoanalytic Inquiry


Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst

by Charles B. Strozier

Purchase from Amazon.Com.

Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001, and a revised paperback edition from Other Press, 2003.

Charles B. Strozier was awarded The Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic Scholarship for his study, Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst. The Goethe Award is given by the Section on Psychoanalysis of the Canadian Psychological Association for the best book in any disciplinary or interdisciplinary subject matter in theoretical, clinical, or applied psychoanalysis and is judged on the basis of providing an outstanding contribution to the field. The competition for the Goethe Award was open to national and international candidates and selected by a refereed committee.


The Psychoanalytic Zero: A Decolonizing Study of Therapeutic Dialogues

by Koichi Togashi

Purchase from Amazon.Com.
Published by Routledge, 2020.

Bringing a unique Eastern perspective to a previously Western-dominated discipline and framed within the current relational and ethical trends in psychoanalysis, the book enables readers to develop a language for understanding an Eastern ethical viewpoint and explore how this language can change our awareness of psychoanalytic practice and human suffering. Chapters are devoted to the Eastern concepts of nothingness, emptiness, surrender, sincerity, silence and narrative, and issues including existential “guilt of being,” trauma, contingency, informed consent, the sense of being human, and uncertainty. Discussions are illustrated and illuminated through vivid recreations and careful elaboration of therapeutic case studies with traumatized patients. The studies demonstrate the process by which patients regain a sense of being human. This enriched perspective will, it is hoped, help the analyst treat traumatized patients who are unable to relate to others, and who do not experience themselves as being human.