In Debating Relational Psychoanalysis, Jon Mills provides an historical record of the debates that had taken place for nearly two decades on his critique of the relational school, including responses from his critics. Since he initiated his critique, relational psychoanalysis has become an international phenomenon with proponents worldwide. This book hopes that further dialogue may not only lead to conciliation, but more optimistically, that relational theory may be inspired to improve upon its theoretical edifice, both conceptually and clinically, as well as develop technical parameters to praxis that help guide and train new clinicians to sharpen their own theoretical orientation and therapeutic efficacy. Because of the public exchanges in writing and at professional symposiums, these debates have historical significance in the development of the psychoanalytic movement as a whole simply due to their contentiousness and proclivity to question cherished assumptions, both old and new. In presenting this collection of his work, and those responses of his critics, Mills argues that psychoanalysis may only advance through critique and creative refinement, and this requires a deconstructive praxis within the relational school itself. Debating Relational Psychoanalysis will be of interest to psychoanalysts of all orientations, psychotherapists, mental health workers, psychoanalytic historians, philosophical psychologists, and the broad disciplines of humanistic, phenomenological, existential, and analytical psychology.

In Debating Relational Psychoanalysis, Jon Mills provides an historical record of the debates that had taken place for nearly two decades on his critique of the relational school, including responses from his critics. Since he initiated his critique, relational psychoanalysis has become an international phenomenon with proponents worldwide. This book hopes that further dialogue may not only lead to conciliation, but more optimistically, that relational theory may be inspired to improve upon its theoretical edifice, both conceptually and clinically, as well as develop technical parameters to praxis that help guide and train new clinicians to sharpen their own theoretical orientation and therapeutic efficacy. Because of the public exchanges in writing and at professional symposiums, these debates have historical significance in the development of the psychoanalytic movement as a whole simply due to their contentiousness and proclivity to question cherished assumptions, both old and new. In presenting this collection of his work, and those responses of his critics, Mills argues that psychoanalysis may only advance through critique and creative refinement, and this requires a deconstructive praxis within the relational school itself. Debating Relational Psychoanalysis will be of interest to psychoanalysts of all orientations, psychotherapists, mental health workers, psychoanalytic historians, philosophical psychologists, and the broad disciplines of humanistic, phenomenological, existential, and analytical psychology.

Stephen A. Mitchell has been at the forefront of the broad paradigmatic shift in contemporary psychoanalysis from the traditional one-person model to a two-person, interactive, relational perspective. In Influence and Autonomy in Psychoanalysis, Mitchell provides a critical, comparative framework for exploring the broad array of concepts newly developed for understanding interactive processes between analysand and analyst. Drawing on the broad traditions of Kleinian theory and interpersonal psychoanalysis, as well as object relations and progressive Freudian thought, he considers in depth the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis, anachronistic ideals like anonymity and neutrality, the nature of analytic knowledge and authority, and the problems of gender and sexual orientation in the age of postmodernism. The problem of influence guides his discussion of these and other topics. How, Mitchell asks, can analytic clinicians best protect the patient’s autonomy and integrity in the context of our growing appreciation of the enormous personal impact of the analyst on the process? Although Mitchell explores many facets of the complexity of the psychoanalytic process, he presents his ideas in his customarily lucid, jargon-free style, making this book appealing not only to clinicians with various backgrounds and degrees of experience, but also to lay readers interested in the achievements of, and challenges before, contemporary psychoanalysis. A splendid effort to relate parallel lines of theorizing and derivative changes in clinical practice and informed by mature clinical judgment and broad scholarship into the history of psychoanalytic ideas, Influence and Autonomy in Psychoanalysis takes a well-deserved place alongside Mitchell’s previous books. It is a brilliant synthesis of converging insights that have transformed psychoanalysis in our time, and a touchstone for enlightened dialogue as psychoanalysis approaches the millennium.

The new edition of Relational Psychotherapy offers a theory that’s immediately applicable to everyday practice, from opening sessions through intensive engagement to termination. In clear, engaging prose, the new edition makes explicit the ethical framework implied in the first edition, addresses the major concepts basic to relational practice, and elucidates the lessons learned since the first edition's publication. It’s the ideal guide for beginning practitioners but will also be useful to experienced practitioners and to clients interested in the therapy process.

In this controversial book, philosopher and psychoanalyst Jon Mills argues that God does not exist; and more provocatively, that God cannot exist as anything but an idea. Put concisely, God is a psychological creation signifying ultimate ideality. Mills argues that the idea or conception of God is the manifestation of humanity’s denial and response to natural deprivation; a self-relation to an internalized idealized object, the idealization of imagined value. After demonstrating the lack of any empirical evidence and the logical impossibility of God, Mills explains the psychological motivations underlying humanity’s need to invent a supreme being. In a highly nuanced analysis of unconscious processes informing the psychology of belief and institutionalized social ideology, he concludes that belief in God is the failure to accept our impending death and mourn natural absence for the delusion of divine presence. As an alternative to theistic faith, he offers a secular spirituality that emphasizes the quality of lived experience, the primacy of feeling and value inquiry, ethical self-consciousness, aesthetic and ecological sensibility, and authentic relationality toward self, other, and world as the pursuit of a beautiful soul in search of the numinous. Inventing God will be of interest to academics, scholars, lay audiences and students of religious studies, the humanities, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, among other disciplines. It will also appeal to psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and mental health professionals focusing on the integration of humanities and psychoanalysis.

This book is concerned with the question of what psychoanalytic training should look like today. Should we go on with the system that has developed over time? Or should we abandon it, and if so, for which reasons?It provides a detailed and compelling account of the ongoing, sometimes heated, international debate about psychoanalytic training. After nearly a century since the onset of formal psychoanalytic training in the 1920s in Berlin, experiences with the prevalent Eitingon model are presented and looked at from different perspectives. Experienced psychoanalysts from all the regions of the psychoanalytic world and from different schools of psychoanalytic thought and clinical conceptualizations share their ideas, critique, and on occasion, their diagnoses. Perhaps no other topic of present-day scientific discussion in the field is as prone to evoke more controversial and passionate reactions than the subject of training.

2013 Goethe Award Winner! This is the first book of its kind to offer a sustained critique of contemporary psychoanalytic thought favoring relational, postmodern, and intersubjective perspectives, which largely define American psychoanalysis today. Conundrums turns an eye toward the philosophical underpinnings of contemporary theory; its theoretical relation to traditional psychoanalytic thought; clinical implications for therapeutic practice; political and ethical ramifications of contemporary praxis; and its intersection with points of consilience that emerge from these traditions. Central arguments and criticisms advanced throughout the book focus on operationally defining the key tenets of contemporary perspectives; the seduction and ambiguity of postmodernism; the question of selfhood and agency; illegitimate attacks on classical psychoanalysis; the role of therapeutic excess; contemporary psychoanalytic politics; and the question of consilience between psychoanalysis as a science versus psychoanalysis as part of the humanities. The historical criticisms against psychoanalysis are further explored in the context of the current philosophical-scientific binary that preoccupies the field.

A Bestseller Attachment Theory shows scientifically how our earliest relationships with our mothers influence our later relationships in life. This book offers an excellent introduction to the findings of attachment theory and the major schools of psychoanalytic thought. "The book every student, colleague, and even rival theoretician has been waiting for. With characteristic wit, philosophical sophistication, scholarship, humanity, incisiveness, and creativity, Fonagy succinctly describes the links, differences, and future directions of his twin themes. [His book] is destined to take its place as one of a select list of essential psychology books of the decade." -Jeremy Holmes, Senior Lecturer in Psychotherapy, University of Exeter "Extraordinary--an invaluable resource for developmental psychoanalysis." -Joy D. Osofsky, Professor, Louisiana State University

In this ambitious new book, Henrietta Moore draws on anthropology, feminism and psychoanalysis to develop an original and provocative theory of gender and of how we become sexed beings. Arguing that the Oedipus complex is no longer the fulcrum of debate between anthropology and psychoanalysis, she demonstrates how recent theorizing on subjectivity, agency and culture has opened up new possibilities for rethinking the relationship between gender, sexuality and symbolism. Using detailed ethnographic material from Africa and Melanesia to explore the strengths and weaknesses of a range of theories in anthropology, feminism and psychoanalysis, Moore advocates an ethics of engagement based on a detailed understanding of the differences and similarities in the ways in which local communities and western scholars have imaginatively deployed the power of sexual difference. She demonstrates the importance of ethnographic listening, of focused attention to people’s imaginations, and of how this illuminates different facets of complex theoretical issues and human conundrums. Written not just for professional scholars and for students but for anyone with a serious interest in how gender and sexuality are conceptualized and experienced, this book is the most powerful and persuasive assessment to date of what anthropology has to contribute to these debates now and in the future.

Building on the innovative work of Unformulated Experience, Donnel B. Stern continues his exploration of the creation of meaning in clinical psychoanalysis with Partners in Thought. The chapters in this fascinating book are undergirded by the concept that the meanings which arise from unformulated experience are catalyzed by the states of relatedness in which the meanings emerge. In hermeneutic terms, what takes place in the consulting room is a particular kind of conversation, one in which patient and analyst serve as one another’s partner in thought, an emotionally responsive witness to the other’s experience. Enactment, which Stern theorizes as the interpersonalization of dissociation, interrupts this crucial kind of exchange, and the eventual breach of enactments frees analyst and patient to resume it. Later chapters compare his views to the ideas of others, considering mentalization theory and the work of the Boston Change Process Study Group. Approaching the link between dissociation and enactment via hermeneutics, metaphor, and narrative, among other perspectives, Stern weaves an experience-near theory of psychoanalytic relatedness that illuminates dilemmas clinicians find themselves in every day. Full of clinical illustrations showing how Stern works with dissociation and enactment, Partners in Thought is destined to take its place beside Unformulated Experience as a major contribution to the psychoanalytic literature.