Description
Book SynopsisThirty five percent of persons who are provided psychotherapy do not benefit from treatment, or drop out of therapy prematurely because they fail to establish a working alliance with the therapist. To address this issue the volume presents a matrix of concepts and research illustrating how traumatic experiences during childhood result in the person developing rigid cognitive functions, emotional expressions and behaviors, interfering with the person participating constructively in relationships. Based on this research, the psychotherapy conducted with an adult, an adolescent, and a child are described to illustrate why and when the therapist should engage and participate with the patient in various body activities to stimulate particular meanings and emotions that promote flexibility in the patient's cognition, emotions, and behaviors. These cases illustrate how cultivating this flexibility enables the patient to establish a working alliance with the therapist and resolve past traumati
Trade ReviewDr. Santostefano’s latest work, Guided Enactments in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, like his earlier clinical texts, is a must-read book for any clinician. This is a well-integrated work that incorporates theory, empirical research, and therapeutic case studies, to make a strong evidence-based case for the central importance of bodily experiences (“enactments”), throughout the life span, as they constitute the meaning-emotions that the person experiences and expresses. Working within a relational psychoanalytic framework, Santostefano expands this approach by weaving together contributions from developmental psychology, cognitive-emotional psychology, behavioral psychology and environmental psychology. The text flows naturally to its culminating set of concrete steps for when and how the therapist can best carry out Santostefano’s broad proposal that the ‘the therapist design, initiate and interact with the patient in enactments.’ -- Willis F. Overton, Temple University
This is a bold, contemporary, and, frankly a refreshing work for anyone involved in the practice and/or in the teaching of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Importantly, Santostefano manages to place psychoanalysis in the broader context of 21st Century psychology, and does so while using examples from across the lifespan (child, adolescent, and adult) to bring his theoretical points into the consultation room. This book is one that will be useful to both seasoned professionals, as well as beginning psychotherapists. -- Benjamin Harris, City University of New York at City College
Table of ContentsContents Chapter 1: A Matrix of Cognitive, Behavioral and Environmental Processes That Enable a Patient to Function Adequately and Develop a Working Alliance with a Therapist: A Path to the Pathway of Change Chapter 2: Studies Investigating Dialectical Relations among Embodied Meanings, Cognitive-Emotional Regulators, Instrumental-Expressive Behaviors and Environments Chapter 3: Clinical Illustrations of Relational-Psychotherapy: Revising Rigid Cognitive- Emotional Orientations and Instrumental-Expressive Behaviors with Enactments Chapter 4: A Psychoanalytic-Relational Model of Embodied Techniques to Connect a Patient’s I-Self and Me-Self: The Path to the Pathway of Reflexivity
