E-Book Overview
Marriage and couple therapists see clients with broken relationships and bonds all the time; those who were once madly in love can grow indifferent, people change, and couples go into sessions feeling depressed, traumatized, and sometimes abused by their partners. Joan Lachkar examines the vicissitudes of love relations by taking into account aspects of aggression, cruelty, sadism, envy, and other primitive defenses lurking in the shadows of love and intimacy. Each chapter revolves around a specific situational conflict, with guidelines and treatment suggestions offered to the therapist. Numerous vignettes and detailed descriptions of theoretical technique, methodology, and diagnostic distinctions are included throughout the book to help readers see theory in action. The theoretical concepts drawn on include psychoanalysis, object relations, self-psychology, attachment theory, DBT, mindfulness, and others, with a heavy emphasis on listening and non-verbal and verbal communication throughout.
E-Book Content
“Finely attuned to the myriad ways in which individuals voice their complaints in marital, cross-cultural, and corporate settings, Lachkar offers us a treasure trove of insight and interventions, as she delineates communicative patterns across the globe within a dyadic context. She also introduces original concepts like the ‘V-spot’ (the point of our greatest vulnerability). Noting changes in the nation’s demography, she offers a cultural ear for discerning cultural rationalization from neurotic conflicts. Her writing is firmly anchored in theory and yet eminently accessible to readers at all levels of experience.” —Salman Akhtar, MD, Thomas Jefferson University, and Supervising and Training Analyst, Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia “Joan Lachkar’s genius for learning from her patients is matched only by her talent for organizing her insights and sharing them with her readers. In Common Complaints in Couple Therapy, she explores the common but frequently overlooked symptomatic styles of the complainer, through which she threads such key modalities of narcissism, borderline conditions, and obsessive-compulsive neurosis, all deftly framed within current theories and therapeutic interventions.” —Dan Dervin, PhD, author of Creativity and Culture, and of the forthcoming The Evolution of Inwardness “Joan Lachkar once again has written an excellent guide for psychologists engaged in conjoint therapies. While she speaks directly to the modern American psychologist, she goes beyond the usual middle-class situations to examine cross-cultural relationships, artists with their special needs, and even the new sensibility toward gays, lesbians, and transsexuals. To other readers, including lay persons outside of the United States, the author offers an unabashed insight into the problems of one key culture, and especially opens the conversation to international conflict-resolution, the control of terrorism, and other psychohistorical themes.” —Norman Simms, PhD, founding editor of Mentalities/ Mentalites, an interdisciplinary journal of the history of mentalities and psychohistory “Lachkar captures the art of listening, distinguishing legitimate complaints, and how to respond. Moving from the domestic to the global, she has succinctly demonstrated the crucial importance of listening to the other as well as walking in their shoes. In this book she reintroduces the challenges that cross-cultural couples bring into today’s ever changing world. This book is of utmost vital importance for all those who are involved in and committed to resolving family to global conflict.” —Nancy Kobrin, PhD, psychoanalyst Common Complaints in Couple Therapy Marriage and couple therapists see clients with broken relationships and bonds all the time; those who were once madly in love can grow indifferent, people change, and couples go