This comprehensive volume presents Richard M. Billow’s unique contributions to the theory and technique of psychotherapy, along with summaries and explications by the volume’s editor, Tzachi Slonim. Through their behavior, therapists define the clinical culture: how relationships are to be regarded and the depth to which narratives and exchanges may be considered. Known for his integration of Bion’s metapsychology with contemporary psychoanalysis, Billow extends our understanding of "relational" to include the emotional relationships people have with individual and collective ideas, and the behaviors attached to these ideas. "Doing our work" (the title of the last section) involves the therapist’s whole being, including cognitions, dreams, words, deeds, and very presence—mental and somatic. Drawing on Lacan, Billow suggests that therapeutic work ought to include a willingness to penetrate other minds with provocative, controversial ideas. His clinical vignettes portray a masterly clinician-in-action, describing his evolving feelings, thoughts, and assessments. Billow’s intimate knowledge of Bionian theory, coupled with his down-to-earth demeanour and clear writing, allows him to explicate and expand upon Bion’s important contributions in a manner accessible to the novice and expert therapist alike. With one eye on therapeutic process, and the other on each participant including the therapist himself, Billow invites each of us to change our minds.

"Richard M. Billow expands and develops his ideas, first presented in Relational Group Psychotherapy: From Basic Assumptions to Passion. He constructs a theoretically sophisticated, yet experience-near approach to contemporary group therapy. Building on Bion's striking theoretical realignment, replacing the polarity unconscious-conscious with infinite-finite, Billow revises traditional concepts and terms to offer a new model of relational group psychotherapy.In this book he defines the essential therapeutic task: to address the hunger for truth, an appetite stimulated by the group itself. Group members bring infinite potential into the room, but the truth that is developed and realized is bounded by the nature of their interrelationships, individual psychologies and perspectives, as well as by human limitations in processing experience to make it meaningful. How the therapist, along with group members, assess and respond to the need for truth, in the immediate clinical context, create the phenomena of resistance, rebellion, and refusal.The group therapist remains central in the action: evaluating and responding to the truth needs of the various individuals and the group itself and detecting and minimizing the impact of falsity.Using lively clinical anecdotes, Billow demonstrates how the group therapist deals with the dynamic forces of the 3 Rs, operating in four relational modes: diplomacy, integrity, sincerity, and authenticity. This volume is essential reading for individual and group psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, academics, and students of psychoanalytic theory."--Provided by publisher.

The collection of the author's papers, which includes some unpublished material and some published in English for the first time, comprises not only the later Group-Analytic writings but also those from the first part of his career as a psychoanalyst. Among the latter, the paper "On Introjections" is of particular interest and importance.

This collection of papers, published between 1976 and 2003, traces the innovative connections which the eminent group analyst Dennis Brown made between medicine and psychoanalysis. They reveal his important insights into how the principles of group analysis can improve our understanding of philosophy and ethics, and trace the development of trans-cultural dimensions of group analysis. Beginning with Dennis’ early work in dermatology, the first section of Resonance and Reciprocity provides a fascinating overview of the insights gained into psychosomatic conditions through the application of psychoanalysis and group analysis. The second section builds on the tenet of group analysis that therapy should change the therapist as well as the client, addressing the changes that can take place in the therapeutic milieu, both in client and provider. The chapter on drowsiness, a modern classic, provides a significant contribution to our understanding of the emotional and physical changes that the therapist experiences during analysis, and its wider implications for our appreciation of how changes in mental and physical states are affected by a person’s emotional world. The final section reveals how Dennis Brown extended his interest and his activities beyond the individual, the small and the large group, and studied groups within and across cultures. This book provides not only a solid understanding of complex analytical notions but also opens the road for future development. It will appeal to students and professionals in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and group psychotherapy.

Integrating cutting-edge relational theory with technique, this volume reveals the deeply personal nature of the intersubjective process of group therapy as it affects the group therapist and other group members. By locating the group therapist's experience in the centre of the action, Richard M. Billow moves away from traditional approaches in group psychotherapy. Instead, he places emphasis on the effect of the therapist's own evolving psychology on what occurs and what does not occur in group psychotherapy. Building on Bion's early theory of group and his later formulations regarding the structure of thought and the role of affect, this work expands on the present understanding of relational theory and technique. Through the use of clinical anecdotes the author is able to ground theory in the realities of clinical experience making this essential reading for group psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, academics and students of psychoanalytic theory.

Drawing on interviews with witnesses to the early psychoanalytic movement as well as new archival material, this chronicle seeks to rescue from obscurity the history of a movement usually regarded as an expensive form of treatment for the economically & intellectually advantaged.

The Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics practiced philosophy not as a detached intellectual discipline but as a worldly art of grappling with issues of daily and urgent human significance. In this classic work, Martha Nussbaum maintains that these Hellenistic schools have been unjustly neglected in recent philosophic accounts of what the classical "tradition" has to offer. By examining texts of philosophers such as Epicurus, Lucretius, and Seneca, she recovers a valuable source for current moral and political thought and encourages us to reconsider philosophical argument as a technique through which to improve lives. Written for general readers and specialists, The Therapy of Desire addresses compelling issues ranging from the psychology of human passion through rhetoric to the role of philosophy in public and private life.