Seduction, surrender, and transformation : emotional engagement in the analytic process / Karen J. Maroda.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Maroda, Karen J.

Series:

Relational perspectives book series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Psychotherapist and patient.

Psychoanalysis.

Physical Description:

viii, 207 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Hillsdale, NJ : Analytic Press, 1999.

Summary:

What are the actual clinical implications of a relational approach to psychoanalytic therapy? Does recent theorizing about "mutuality" and "intersubjectivity" really change the way analysts work with patients? In her theoretically articulate and clinically sophisticated answer to these questions, Karen Maroda calls on analytic therapists to "show some emotion!" Seduction, Surrender, and Transformation demonstrates how interpersonal psychoanalysis obliges analysts to engage their patients with genuine emotional responsiveness, so that not only the patient but the analyst too is open to ongoing transformation through the analytic experience. In so doing, the analyst moves from the position of an "interpreting observer" to that of an "active participant ard facilitator" whose affective communications enable the patient to acquire basic self-trust along with self-knowledge.

Drawing on the current literature on affect, Maroda argues that psychological change occurs through affect-laden interpersonal processes. Given that most patients in psychotherapy have problems with affect management, the completing of cycles of affective communication between therapist and patient becomes a vitally important aspect of the therapeutic enterprise. Through emotionally open responses to their patients and careful use of patient-prompted self-disclosures, analysts can facilitate affect regulation responsibly and constructively, with the emphasis always remaining on the patients' experience. Moments of mutual surrender -- the honest emotional giving over of patient to analyst and analyst to patient -- epitomize the emotionally intense interpersonal experiences that lead to enduring intrapsychicchange.

Maroda's work is profoundly personal. She does not hesitate to share with the reader how her own personality affects her thinking and her work. Indeed, she believes her theoretical and clinical preferences are emblematic of the way in which the analyst's subjectivity necessarily shapes theory choice and practice preferences in general. Seduction, Surrender, and Transformation is not only a powerful brief for emotional honesty in the analytic relationship but also a model of the personal openness that, according to Maroda, psychoanalysis demands of all its practitioners.

Contents:

Chapter 1 On Seduction, Intellectualization, and the Bad Mother: Underlying Assumptions of the Analytic Process 11

Chapter 2 On the Analyst's Fear of Surrender: Can Sex Be Far Behind? 49

Chapter 3 Show Some Emotion: Completing the Cycle of Affective Communication 65

Chapter 4 Why Self-Disclosure Works in Spite of the Analyst's Imperfections 87

Chapter 5 Since Feeling Is First: Projective Identification and Countertransference Interventions 105

Chapter 6 Enactment: When the Patient's and Analyst's Pasts Converge 121

Chapter 7 Therapeutic Necessity or Malpractice? Physical Contact Reconsidered 141

Chapter 8 Reflections on the Analyst's Legitimate Power and the Existence of Reality 161.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 185-193) and index.

ISBN:

0881632252

OCLC:

40510461