Description
Book SynopsisRobert Langs had a substantial impact on American psychoanalysis in the 1970s and 1980s—both Freudian and Jungian —due to his development of what he termed “the adaptive paradigm.” According to Langs, the psychoanalytic tradition had vastly underestimated the clinical importance of adaptation, both the role adaptive problems play in psychological and emotional conflicts as well as the significance adaptation has for understanding unconscious communications in clinical practice. In spite of Langs’ impact on the psychoanalysis and analytical psychology of his time, there have been few psychoanalytic studies either of adaptation or of Langs’ adaptive paradigm since the 1980s and no attempts to link Langs’ thinking with that of Carl Jung.
Adaption and Psychotherapy gives a concentrated but complete picture of Langs’ adaptive clinical theory and also expands Langs’ treatment of adaptation by examining Jung’s theory of adaptation. Jung offers an extended treatment of adaptation in his treatise On Psychic Energy. However, understanding Jung’s theory of adaptation is difficult, due to Jung’s having two diverse and virtually exclusive meanings of “adaptation” in his writings, rendering his thought on adaptation somewhat obscure and, at times, inconsistent. The book differentiates those diverse meanings of adaptation and articulates Jung’s positive and clinical understanding of adaptation in a way that allows comparison to Langs’ adaptive paradigm as well as a creative synthesis of the two approaches. The result is a development of Langs’ adaptive paradigm and an expansion of clinical theory and technique that is valuable for both Freudian and Jungian analysts.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: On Psyche and Adaptation
Introduction
The Notion of “Psyche” in Early Analytic Theory
Jung’s “Basic Postulates”: The Reality of the Psyche
Understanding the “Unconscious”
On Clinical Interaction or, How Max Scheler was Ahead of His Time
Conclusion
Chapter 2: Adaptation in the Early Analytic Tradition
Introduction
Sigmund Freud
Adaptation in Ego Psychology: Heinz Hartmann
Conclusion
Chapter 3: Robert Langs and Adaptation in Clinical Practice
Introduction
Original Development of Adaptation and the “Adaptive Context”
Central Ideas Derived from Langs’ Understanding of Adaptation
Rearticulating the Analytic Relationship
The “Reality” of Therapy Includes the Therapeutic Frame
The Communicative Fields
Unconscious Communication and Analytic Listening
Two Types of Derivative Communication
Critical Considerations of Langs’ Theory of Unconscious Communication
Clinical Illustration
Clinical Example
Summary
Excursus: Final Phase: Adaptation and Death Anxiety
Conclusion
Chapter 4: Adaptation in Carl Jung
Introduction
The Concept of “Adaptation” in Jung
On Psychic Energy
Theoretical Assumptions
Progression and Regression of Libido
Langs and Jung
Adaptation in Clinical Practice
Returning to Bruce
Clarifying Adaptation in Jung
Conclusion
Chapter 5: Adaptation and Clinical Technique
Introduction
What is and What is the Value of Clinical Technique?
What Langs and Jung Share
How Langs and Jung Might Supplement Each Other
Incompatibilities between Langs and Jung
Understanding Symbols
Individual and Collective
Adaptation, Clinical Interaction, and Ethics
Conclusion
References
Index
About the Author
