Building bridges : the negotiation of paradox in psychoanalysis / Stuart A. Pizer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pizer, Stuart A.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Psychoanalysis.

Negotiation.

Paradox.

Object relations (Psychoanalysis).

Medical Subjects:

Psychoanalysis.

Physical Description:

xix, 220 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Hillsdale, NJ : Analytic Press, 1998.

Summary:

In Building Bridges, Stuart A. Pizer gives much-needed recognition to the central role of negotiation in the analytic relationship and in the therapeutic process. Following careful review of Winnicott's perspective on paradox -- via the pairings of privacy and interrelatedness, isolation and interdependence, ruthlessness and concern, and the notion of transitional phenomena -- Pizer locates these elemental paradoxes within the negotiations of an analytic process. Together, he observes, analyst and patient negotiate the boundaries, potentials, limits, tonalities, resistances, and meanings that determine the course of their clinical dialogue. Elaborating on the theme of a multiply constituted, "distributed" self, Pizer presents a model for the tolerance of paradox as a developmental achievement related to ways in which caretakers function as "transitional mirrors."

In Part II, Pizer broadens the scope of his study by turning to negotiation theory and practices in the disciplines of law, diplomacy, and dispute resolution. He suggests how an appreciation of paradox may benefit research and practice in the field of intergroup negotiation and, conversely, how the principles of negotiation theory help clarify aspects of psychoanalytic technique that represent "good" and "bad" strategies of negotiation.

Pizer's interdisciplinary scholarship is matched by a ranging clinical sensibility that leads him to address the relationship between conflict and paradox within psychoanalytic paradigms and also to reevaluate psychoanalytic gender theory in terms of paradox and negotiation. Nor does he shy away from the therapeutic domain of "the nonnegotiable, " which receives systematic consideration.Enlivened by numerous clinical vignettes and a richly detailed chronicle of an analytic case from its earliest negotiations to termination, Building Bridges is altogether a psychoanalytic work of our time.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [207]-213) and index.

ISBN:

0881631701

OCLC:

38964136