This book defines postmodern relational concepts, and offers a clear, thoughtfully curated examination of relationality and its impact on psychoanalytic technique for both experienced clinicians and those newer to the field.

In two brilliant essays, Adam Phillips reveals what is at the heart of psychoanalysis - how it can enable both analyst and patient to live more fully, more creatively. In addition to the essays are creative and openly expressed questions and commentaries, plus an interview, inspired by one of the foremost thinkers in the field of psychoanalysis. The book presents a day-long symposium with Adam Phillips and includes additional contributions from John Bliss, Patricia Ticineto Clough, Edward Corrigan, Holly Levenkron, Kathleen DelMar Miller, Thomas Rini, Ron Taffel, Betty P. Teng, Karen Weiser, and Melissa White Gomez.

LGBTIQ+ people are more
likely than cisgender and heterosexual individuals to suffer with mental health
issues, yet often have poorer therapeutic outcomes. Mainstream Eurocentric
psychotherapeutic theories, developed largely by heterosexual, cisgender and
white theorists, tend to see LGBTIQ+ as a singular group through this othered
lens. Despite the undeniable value offered by many of these theories, they and
those who use them - queer therapists included - can often pathologize,
marginalize, misunderstand and diminish the flourishing and diversity of queer
experience.

In this volume, editor and psychotherapist Jane C. Czyzselska speaks with practitioners and clients from diverse modalities and lived
experiences, exploring and rethinking some of the unique challenges encountered in a world that continues to marginalize queer lives.

The contributors to Queering Psychotherapy present key insights and practical advice in adynamic conversational format, providing intimate access to therapists'
personal and professional knowledge and reflections. This book is an invaluable training in itself.

Life After a Partner's Suicide Attempt is the first publication to document in depth the lived experiences of the partners of individuals who have attempted to take their own lives. Although no one has died, the ramifications are, nonetheless, life-changing and permanent. Research in suicidology has paid virtually no attention to these partners, other than to explore their role as caregiver. Based on a series of sensitively conducted interviews, Dr McGivern proposes a psychotherapeutic pathway towards recovery through exploration of personal trauma, relationship injury, reactivation of adverse childhood experiences, ambiguous loss, boundary ambiguity, as well as post-traumatic growth. He highlights implications for psychotherapy training and research and makes recommendations for practice and policy. Written with both the general reader and practitioners in mind, the author's goal is to share the extensive insights he has gained through his research and in doing so, to give voice to partners worldwide who silently endure the aftermath of their loved one's suicide attempt.

Ecotherapy: A Field Guide presents an extensive review of the field of ecotherapy that unearths a number of ambiguities in the way this therapy is understood and described. The review explores six themes derived from a critical analysis of the findings: human and nature; therapy and therapeutic; wilderness and wild; physical and meta-physical; culture and indigeneity; and the skin-bound self and the ecological Self.

Throughout their exploration, the authors privilege traditions which predate the modern interest in this subject. They propose a new metatheory for ecotherapy practice that aims to bring some cohesion to the field, honour its heritage, and support its future development. Ultimately, the guide argues that great care should be taken in how ecotherapy is practiced and described, as many of the terms currently being used are culturally inappropriate and therapeutically counterproductive.

For more than a century, the cultural imagination of
psychoanalysis has been assumed and largely continues to be
assumed as Western. Fundamental ideas about human
relationships, family, marriage, and gender often remain
unexamined and pervade the analytic space as if they are
universally valid. In the intellectual climate of our times, with the
rise of relativism in the human sciences and politically with the
advent of decolonization, the cultural and historical transcendence
of psychoanalytic thought can no longer be taken for granted.

Insights from clinical work embedded in the cultural imaginations
of non-Western civilizations could help psychoanalysis rethink
some of its theories of the human psyche, extending these to
cover a fuller range of human experience. These cultural
imaginations are an invaluable resource for the move away from a
universal psychoanalysis to a more global one that remains aware
of but is not limited by its origins in the modern West.

This book of
essays aims to be a step in that journey, of altering the self-perception
of psychoanalysis from 'one size fits all' into a more
nuanced enterprise that reflects and is enriched by cultural
particularities.

'This is an area ripe for exploration' - Hilary Mantel

How might we better understand our travels through Grandmotherland? In this lively exploration, an experienced child psychotherapist draws together a wide range of perspectives on the role and experience of grandmothers.

Judith Edwards looks back to the past and forward to the future, while being rooted in the reality of the modern grandmother's life. We meet 'good' grannies, 'bad' grannies, and all those in between, as well as women who decided to be agents of transmission in other ways than passing on their DNA.

Our guide looks at how the meme of the grandmother is affected by personality, culture, tradition and 'norms' and considers how psychoanalytic insights may help us understand this territory of life.

Have we all become narcissists of the social media age? How have the internet and online platforms shaped the way we work? Is all of this technology positive or negative for our mental health? Or is it both at once? Steffen Krüger and Jacob Johnassen show how media function beyond the rational. Spanning a wide range of examples, Psychoanalysis and the Media guides readers through the growing field of psychoanalytic media studies in a clear and accessible manner. This book is the first critical introduction to the psychoanalytic study of media - from film and TV, to social media, games and artificial intelligence and is an indispensable read for everyone who wants to understand the complex relationship between humans and technology today.

Born into poverty and violence, Lora's early life was one of extreme vulnerability. She was prostituted for the first time at the age of nine and suffered unspeakable treatment from those who should have protected her. The impact of this early trauma led to her institutionalization soon after she started college, an incarceration she would not have survived but for a courageous nurse who fought for her release. Fifty years later, after a long career as a successful mental health professional, and recognized as leading educator and sought-after public speaker, Lora revisited the grounds of the Illinois state mental hospital where she was once kept in inhumane, degrading, and life-threatening circumstances. This profound and compelling memoir traces her life as a survivor of child abuse, sex trafficking, illegal pharmacological drug research, and institutional abuse. Having experienced such horrifying and traumatic events, how did she survive? And to what purpose? Seeking the resolution to these unanswered questions, Lora's experiences illuminate and validate the power of love and the strength of the indomitable human spirit that lives within each one of us. This is her story.

The story of the childhood and youth of Peter Heller, one of the first children to be psychoanalyzed by Anna Freud. To tell this story Vivian Heller draws on a wealth of primary sources, including her father's case history and his internment diary, using novelistic techniques to bring the past alive. While in Anna's care, Peter's native Vienna slides into Fascist barbarism and he is forced to navigate an increasingly dangerous world. He flees to England only to be deported to Canada, where he is interned as a German-speaking foreign national, a situation that put him among Jewish refugees and Nazi P.O.W.'s.

James F. Masterson pioneered an innovative clinical approach to the dynamic psychotherapy of personality disorder. Masterson held that borderline, narcissistic, and schizoid conditions begin when growth of outer relationship and inner object relatedness is inhibited at focal stages of the development of the self. A therapeutic relationship addressed to the specific developmental needs of a troubled personality, he believed, frees the natural progress of the self toward fulfilment. This review of Masterson's legacy cites his later integration of neurobiology as well as attachment theory and considers inclusion of such post-Masterson concepts as self-state theory. Clinical examples are offered throughout to illustrate this dynamic approach to a therapeutic challenge now at the forefront of today's caseloads.

Psychotherapy invites us to tell the story of our human relationships; ecopsychotherapy expands this to include our earth story, the context or continuum in which our human relationships sit. Ecopsychotherapy is not simply a technique to be applied in therapy: it involves a change in perspective. While practising therapy outdoors is a radical shift that can support and facilitate the healing process, it also acknowledges that our relationship with the earth is both inside and outside ourselves. As climate chaos quickens and increasing numbers of people are waking up to the seriousness of our environmental crisis, we are becoming more aware of our dysfunctional relationship with the earth - the body on whom we depend for everything. Ecopsychotherapy can help to support our reconnection with nature and to discover hope in turbulent times.

This book examines the key ordering--disordering processes of the psychotic self. It draws on Sigmund Freud, Jung, object relation and selfpsychologies, and, particularly, the work of Winnicott, Bion, and Elkin.

This book provides all of the information a practitioner needs in order to begin work with clients with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Drawing on experiences from her own practice and extensive research conducted with the help of internationally acclaimed experts in the field, the author describes the development of DID and the structure of the personality of these clients. The reader is guided through the assessment process, the main phases and components of treatment, and the issues and contentions that may arise in this work. Throughout the text there are case examples, practical exercises, techniques, and strategies that can be used in therapy sessions. The resources section includes screening and assessment instruments, as well as information on techniques for managing anxiety and self harm, both of which can be major problems when working with clients with DID.

Most Western approaches to dreams are limited to a psychological paradigm. Building on Jung's work, which was heavily influenced by the transformative model of alchemy, a new multidimensional approach to the process of human transformation through dreams has been developed which recognises the interrelationship of the psychological and the spiritual, and works with the mirroring body in service of both. In the approach presented here, dreams are seen as a mixture of worldly impressions and expressions of our individual spirit, which is trying to speak to us through the metaphors and narrative of our dreams. In this way, the spiritual comes through the psychological dimension. Though it may seem to be a contradiction, our dreams hold the key to our 'awakening' and, by actively engaging with them we can unlock their potential for initiating and facilitating our own unfoldment. This book is about recognising this process when it occurs in dreams, and how to work with them in the service of our growth and self-realisation.

Through the stories of individual children, this book illuminates the process of creative, play-based child psychotherapy. Each chapter focuses on a specific issue that brings a child or a young person to the therapy room and explores the use and meaning of particular objects and 'object games'. Through these insightful and dynamic stories, readers will gain a profound understanding of the healing power of play in the context of child psychotherapy. The importance and influence Attachment Theory, through the work of Donald Winnicott, alongside that of Anne Alvarez and Margot Sunderland, is woven through the book.

Composite case material, derived from the author's many years of clinical practice, demonstrates the centrality of the therapeutic relationship, in concert with approaches which foreground play and creativity in bringing about healing. Chapters address childhood challenges such as autism spectrum condition, selective mutism, parental conflict and separation, ADHD, learning disability, loss and bereavement. These individual difficulties are explored with a sensibility towards both the individual predicament, but also the complex and dynamic society in which our understanding and experiences of race, culture, class, migration, gender, disability and sexuality are in constant evolution. This demonstration of child psychotherapy in action will be of interest to psychotherapists, parents and anyone working to provide emotional support for children in schools, nurseries and other settings.

While the prime focus of psychotherapy theory and practice is intrapersonal and interpersonal, these are nested in an often unexamined supra-personal sociological, ecological, and spiritual context. Based on in-depth interviews with people from a wide range of faith backgrounds, Jeremy Holmes highlights the role belief and spirituality play in everyday lives. He identifies core common themes of attachment and hope; frameworks of meaning; and the everyday praxis of rhythm and ritual. He also draws on classic literature, using Charlotte Bronte's Jayne Eyre and Tolstoy's War and Peace. The book concludes with a moving account of Holmes' own practice as a psychotherapist. The Spirit of Psychotherapy is a must-read for psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and mental health professionals to understand the importance of faith within the largely secular world of psychotherapy.

Much has been written about migration from a historic, economic and social perspective, but little has been written about it from a psychiatric or psychoanalytic point of view. Through the work of Frantz Fanon, BJF Laubscher and Wulf Sachs (psychoanalyst), Busetto explores philosophical and ethical problems, such as the relationship between the individual and society, culture and mental illness and the fraught question of race and difference.

This book was written to meet the need of therapists: a succinct, thorough, practical, clear, down-to-earth handbook to which a therapist can refer as needed. Many, if not most, therapists have encountered a victim of complex mind control and ritual abuse, and most therapists feel deskilled in this work. Working with such clients is a challenge for therapists, given the extreme and prolonged nature of the clients' trauma, the severity of their dissociative disorders, the complexity of the mind control they have experienced, and the reality of organised perpetrator groups who follow up on their victims. Every therapist needs to know the basics of this work. Chapter 1 defines and explains dissociation, ritual abuse, and mind control. It lists indicators which suggest a client may be a victim, and recommends developing 'reflective belief (or possibly) disbelief' rather than maintaining 'therapeutic neutrality'. Chapter 2, The therapeutic relationship, describes victims' training to not form bonds, the parental nature of the therapeutic bond with such clients, and practical ways to relate to someone dealing with internal multiplicity. Chapter 3, The life of a mind control survivor, describes victims' planned experiences from infancy all the way through adulthood. Chapter 4, Engineered personality systems, describes the most common forms of training or programming, and the 'jobs' of inner parts of the victim. Chapter 5, Stabilisation and internal safety, explains the way in which some parts punish the victim for disloyalty by creating destabilising symptoms. Chapter 6, Working with the personality system, describes internal hierarchies and how to work with them. Chapter 7, Present-day physical safety, looks at the ongoing torture and harassment of many victims by perpetrator groups, and describes the training of various parts to return to the perpetrators, report to them, and be available for further abuse. Chapter 8, Working through the traumatic memories, gives guidelines regarding how to help a client work through the numerous traumatic training memories. Chapter 9, Confronting the spiritual issues in ritual abuse, describes the perpetrators' spiritual/moral abuse and simulation of spiritual entities. It discusses the question of demonic possession, and looks at the real spiritual issues which victims and therapists must deal with. Chapter 10, Healing for our clients and ourselves, discusses victims' emotional healing, grieving, developing self-esteem and integration, and therapists' intimidation and vicarious traumatisation.