Thoroughly grounded in contemporary developmental research, A Spirit of Inquiry: Communication in Psychoanalysis explores the ecological niche of the infant-caregiver dyad and examines the evolutionary leap that permits communication to take place concurrently in verbal an nonverbal modes. Via the uniquely human capacity for speech, the authors hold, intercommunication deepens into a continuous process of listening to, sensing into, and deciphering motivation-driven messages. The analytic exchange is unique owing to a broad communicative repertoire that encompasses all the permutations of day-to-day exchanges. It is the spirit of inquiry that endows such communicative moments with an overarching sense of purpose and thereby permits analysis to become an intimate relationship decisively unlike any other. In elucidating the special character of this relationship, the authors refine their understanding of motivational systems theory by showing how exploration, previously conceptualized as a discrete motivational system, simultaneously infuses all the motivational systems with an integrative dynamic that tends to a cohesive sense of self. Of equal note is their discerning use of contemporary attachment reseach, which provides convincing evidence of the link between crucial relationships and communication. Replete with detailed case studies that illustrate both the context and nature of specific analytic inquiries, A Spirit of Inquiry presents a novel perspective, sustained by empirical research, for integrating the various communicative modalities that arise in any psychoanalytic treatment. The result is a deepened understanding of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in analytic relationships. Indeed, the book is a compelling brief for the claim that subjectivity and intersubjectivity, in their full complexity, can only be understood through clinically relevant and scientifically credible theories of motivation and communication.
An Experience-based Vision of Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice looks at each individual as a motivated doer doing, seeking, feeling, and intending, and relates development, sense of self, and identity to changes that are brought about in analytic psychotherapy. Based on conceptualizing experience as it is lived from infancy throughout life, this book identifies three major pathways to development and applies Lichtenberg, Lachmann, and Fosshage’s experience-based vision to psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Using detailed clinical narratives and vignettes, as well as organizational studies, the book takes up the distinction between a person’s responding to a failure in achieving a goal with disappointment and seeking an alternative path, or with disillusion and a collapse in motivation. From the variety of topics covered, the reader will get a broad overview of an experience-based analytic conception of motivation begun with Lichtenberg’s seven motivational systems. This title will be of great interest to established psychoanalysts, as well as those training in psychoanalysis and clinical counselling psychology programs.
In psychoanalysis, enlivenment is seen as residing in a sense of self, and this sense of self is drawn from and shaped by lived experience. Enlivening the Self: The First Year, Clinical Enrichment, and the Wandering Mind describes the vitalizing and enrichment of self-experience throughout the life cycle and shows how active experience draws on many fundamental functional capacities, and these capacities come together in support of systems of motivation; that is, organized dynamic grouping of affects, intentions, and goals. The book is divided into three essays: Infancy – Joseph Lichtenberg presents extensive reviews of observation and research on the first year of life. Based on these reviews, he delineates twelve foundational qualities and capacities of the self as a doer doing, initiating and responding, activating and taking in. Exploratory therapy – James L. Fosshage looks where therapeutic change is entwined with development. There are many sources illustrated for enhancing the sense of self, and Frank M. Lachmann pays particular attention to humor and to the role that the twelve qualities and capacities play in the therapeutic process. The wandering mind – Frank M. Lachmann covers the neuroscience and observation that "mind wandering" is related to the immediacy of the sense of self linking now with past and future. Throughout the book the authors’ arguments are illustrated with rich clinical vignettes and suggestions for clinical practice. This title will be a must for psychoanalysts, including trainees in psychoanalysis, psychiatry residents and candidates at psychoanalytic institutes and also graduate students in clinical and counselling psychology programs.
In this sequel to Lichtenberg's Psychoanalysis and Motivation (TAP, 1989), the authors show how their revised theory of motivation provides the foundation for a new approach to psychoanalytic technique. The approach in Self and Motivational Systemsemphasizes a finely honed sensitivity to moment-to-moment analytic exchanges and an appreciation of which motivational system is dominant during that exchange. Throughout, the authors stress the creative power of psychoanalysis as a joint effort shaped by the intersubjective context of a particular analysand communicating and interacting with a particular analyst. At the heart of the analytic relationship is the analysand's expectation of evoking a vitalizing selfobject experience from the analyst and the analyst's expectation, in turn, of evoking a selfobject experience of efficacy from his or her work with the analysand.
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