Description
Book SynopsisThe third volume in the The Practice of Psychotherapy series, Elusive Elements in Practice brings together a collection of papers, examining their ideas and theories more commonly regarded as off-centre, or indeed elusive, in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The papers in this volume concentrate on the religious and spiritual dimension of the therapeutic encounter, the "aesthetic experience", creativity and mysticism. These "moments of relatedness", or meetings of minds, are discussed and examined with the help of clinical examples.'...[psychotherapists] tend to agree on what is just too eccentric and is to be regarded with reserve and suspicion. These ideas are left on the margins and, getting less attention, they are more elusive. They will not get concentrated consideration either in the consulting room or in the study. This is one reason why they are more elusive. But such neglect may cause potentially good ideas to be lost, as well as ridiculous ones.'- From the IntroductionContributors:Patricia Allen; Bernardine Bishop; Faye Carey; Nathan Field; Angela Foster; Josephine Klein; Steven Mendoza; and Victoria O'Connell.
Trade Review'The therapeutic elements this collection deals with may be elusive, but they are also eminently practical. Stephen Mendoza (following Bion) writes on "faith", Josephine Klein on the importance of true "recognition" for the patient; others write on the consequences of the baby's experience of the mother's beauty. These therapists venture to look into a more affirmative territory, most of it impeccably psychoanalytic but hitherto obscured, perhaps, by Freud's celebrated pessimism. The result is a courageous and original collection of papers, which offer a great deal of "food for thought".'- David M. Black, British Psycho-Analytical Society
Table of ContentsThe London Centre for Psychotherapy -- Introduction -- Mechanisms and mysteries -- Love, the aesthetic conflict and the self -- The emerging religious dimension of knowing in psychoanalysis -- Therapy by design: style in the therapeutic encounter -- Narcissism, the mystics' remedy
