E-Book Overview
Since trauma is a thoroughly relational phenomenon, it is highly unpredictable, and cannot be made to fit within the scientific framework Freud so admired. In Toward a Psychology of Uncertainty: Trauma-Centered Psychoanalysis, Doris Brothers urges a return to a trauma-centered psychoanalysis. Making use of relational systems theory, she shows that experiences of uncertainty are continually transformed by the regulatory processes of everyday life such as feeling, knowing, forming categories, making decisions, using language, creating narratives, sensing time, remembering, forgetting, and fantasizing. Insofar as trauma destroys the certainties that organize psychological life, it plunges our relational systems into chaos and sets the stage for the emergence of rigid, life-constricting relational patterns. These trauma-generated patterns, which often involve denial of sameness and difference, the creation of complexity-reducing dualities, and the transformation of certainty into certitude, figure prominently in virtually all of the complaints for which patients seek analytic treatment. Analysts, she claims, are no more strangers to trauma than are their patients. Using in-depth clinical illustrations, Dr. Brothers demonstrates how a mutual desire to heal and to be healed from trauma draws patients and analysts into their analytic relationships. She recommends the reconceptualization of what has heretofore been considered transference and countertransference in terms of the transformation of experienced uncertainty. In her view the increased ability of both analytic partners to live with uncertainty is the mark of a successful treatment. Dr. Brothers’ perspective sheds fresh light on a variety of topics of great general interest to analysts as well as many of their patients, such as gender, the acceptance of death, faith, cult-like training programs, and burnout. Her discussions of these topics are enlivened by references to contemporary cinema and theatre.
E-Book Content
IdlVgY 6 EhnX]dad\n d[ JcXZgiV^cin Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series Volume 27 ER4786X.indb 1 10/19/07 6:42:56 AM Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series Vol. 1: Reflections on Self Psychology – Joseph D. Lichtenberg & Samuel Kaplan (eds.) Vol. 2: Psychoanalysis and Infant Research – Joseph D. Lichtenberg Vol. 4: Structures of Subjectivity: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Phenomenology – George E. Atwood & Robert D. Stolorow Vol. 7: The Borderline Patient: Emerging Concepts in Diagnosis, Psychodynamics, and Treatment, Vol. 2 – James S. Grotstein, Marion F. Solomon, & Joan A. Lang (eds.) Vol. 8: Psychoanalytic Treatment: An Intersubjective Approach – Robert D. Stolorow, Bernard Brandchaft, & George E. Atwood Vol. 9: Female Homosexuality: Choice Without Volition – Elaine V. Siegel Vol. 10: Psychoanalysis and Motivation – Joseph D. Lichtenberg Vol. 11: Cancer Stories: Creativity and SelfRepair – Esther Dreifuss Kattan Vol. 12: Contexts of Being: The Intersubjective Foundations of Psychological Life – Robert D. Stolorow & George E. Atwood Vol. 13: Self and Motivational Systems: Toward a Theory of Psychoanalytic Technique – Joseph D. Lichtenberg, Frank M. Lachmann, & James L. Fosshage Vol. 14: Affects as Process: An Inquiry into the Centrality of Affect in Psychological Life – Joseph M. Jones Vol. 15: Understanding Therapeutic Action: Psychodynamic Concepts of Cure – Lawrence E. Lifson (ed.) Vol. 18: Kohut, Loewald, and the Postmoderns: A Comparative Study of Self and Relationship – Judith Guss Teicholz Vol. 19: A Spirit of Inquiry: Communication in Psychoanalysis – Joseph D. Lichtenberg, Frank M. Lachmann, & James L. Fosshage Vol. 20: Craft and Spirit: A Guide to Exploratory Psychotherapies – Joseph D. Lichtenberg Vol. 21: Attachment and Sexuality – Diana Diamond, Sidney J. Blatt, & Joseph D. Lichtenberg Vol. 22: Psychotherapy and