Guided Enactments in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A New Look at Therapy With Adults and Children

(Hardback)

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Thirty 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 patients 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 traumatic experiences. The volume also describes a therapeutic model of techniques a therapist should follow when adult and adolescent patients fail to establish a working alliance, do not benefit from discussing and free associating, and when child patients do not benefit from play therapy.

Reviews

Dr. Santostefanos 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 Santostefanos 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

Author Bio

Sebastiano Santostefano is retired associate professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.