Emphasizing the transformational possibilities that grow out of their relational model of therapy, David E. and Jill Savege Scharff invite us into the territory of interactive journeys with individual patients. A contemporary classic.
Part history, part review of theory, part casebook, this masterful work will long stand as the definitive text on object relations and its role in mental health and mental illness. An invaluable contribution to our understanding of the theory and its use in clinical practice, Object Relations Individual Therapy is one of those rare finds―a volume that belongs in every practitioner’s library. — Theodore J. Jacobs, M.D., New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute
Arguably the finest contemporary teachers of object relations theory, Drs. Jill and David Scharff have put their teaching in writing in what must certainly be the most comprehensive text to date. It is thoughtfully organized and strikes a fine balance between theory and practice; readers can trust the Scharffs’ accounts of others’ work. Perhaps the heart of the book is a chapter on chaos theory and ‘fractals’―yep, fractals―that is deeply interesting and suggestive. The book’s unparalleled accomplishment, however, lies in the quality of the clinical writing, especially in these authors’ accounts of their own passing states of mind―or countertransferences―in work with their patients. A truly fine book. — Christopher Bollas, PhD, British Psychoanalytical Society
W.R.D. Fairbairn was both a precursor and an architect of revolutionary changes in psychoanalysis. Through a handful of tightly reasoned papers written in the 1940s and 1950s, Fairbairn emerged as an incisive, albeit relatively obscure, voice in the wilderness, at considerable remove from mainstream Freudian and Kleinian psychoanalysis. But in the 1970s Harry Guntrip made Fairbairn’s thinking more accessible to a wide readership, and Fairbairn’s object relations theory, with its innovative theoretical and clinical concepts, was at the center of the turn toward relational thinking that swept psychoanalysis in the 1980s and 1990s.
Fairbairn, Then and Now is a landmark volume, because a thorough grasp of Fairbairn’s contribution is crucial to any understanding of what is taking place within psychoanalysis today. And Fairbairn’s work remains a treasure trove of rich insights into the problems and issues in theory and clinical practice with which analysts and therapists are struggling today.
This is particularly propitious time for renewed focus on Fairbairn’s contribution. A wealth of previously unpublished material has recently emerged, and the implications of Fairbairn’s ideas for current developments in trauma, dissociation, infant research, self theory, field therapy, and couple and family therapy are becoming increasingly clear. The conference that stimulated the contributions to this volume by internationally eminent Fairbairn clinicians and scholars was a historically important event, and Fairbairn, Then and Now makes the intellectual ferment generated by this event available to all interested readers.
Refinding the Object and Reclaiming the Self is a groundbreaking study of the growth of the self out of the mutuality that lies at the heart of the therapeutic encounter. Applying an object relations perspective to individual psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, Dr. David Scharff constructs a rich theory of the self derived from individual, family, and marital therapy, groups, and mother-infant research. He applies this vision of a self composed of a network of internal and external object relations to a therapy based on the shared subjective experiences of patient and therapist.
At the heart of Scharff’s approach is a way of working in the area that is paradoxically both between therapist and patient and within each of them. He explores the ways in which patient and therapist communicate through complementary, resonating object relations systems, which each also remains firmly distinct in role and purpose.
Beginning with sessions from the opening phases of a psychoanalytic treatment, Scharff illustrates the interdependence of self and object, of patient and therapist, from the beginning. He spells out a major theoretical contribution of the book: that while both self and internal object are functions of an overarching self, the self alone is not the comprehensive unite of therapeutic consideration. Rather it is a self constructed out of a graduated and interlocking series of relationships. Placed between mirrors that face each other, we cannot conceive of ourselves without invoking the reflection of others’ gaze, body gestures, echoing sounds, and responsive expressions, even while we also reflect their selves.
The second section of the book develops these themes clinically, illustrating the use of projective and introspective identification in an extended couple assessment, the transformation of early memories and internal objects during individual psychotherapy, and the birth of a patient’s refund self in the analytic encounter. A third section develops a startling, original view of the dream as a communication between self and other in individual psychotherapy, and the birth of the patient’s refund self in the analytic encounter. A fourth and equally original section explores self and object relations from the vantage of family and mother-infant studies. The final section on clinical technique examines the role of the object relations of the therapist in individual therapy and psychoanalysis, ending with illustrations of therapeutic growth between patient and therapist during termination.
A master clinician and writer, David Scharff has given us a pathfinding study of the inexplicable relationship of self and object in development and in therapy.
This book introduces the work of Enrique Pichon Rivière to an English-reading psychoanalytic audience, and then explores some of the many implications and developments of his groundbreaking work. This eBook follows the publication of the first group of articles on and by Enrique Pichon Rivière in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, and the first collection of his writings in English as a print book, The Linked Self in Psychoanalysis: The Work of Enrique Pichon Rivière. (46 pp.)
The Psychoanalytic Century examines and celebrates Freud’s extraordinary influence on modern analysis and Western culture as a whole. The book comprehensively covers the evolution of our understanding of hysteria as the diagnostic entity through which Freud invented psychoanalysis, and the assessment of the contribution of Freud and his successors to the theory of love and clinical approaches to love relations, as well as to literature, the visual arts, international diplomacy, and race. In this volume we celebrate Freud’s legacy, and explore the scope of his impact on psychoanalysis, society, and culture. The contributions of many distinguished colleagues follow the evolution of analysis as his ideas move beyond historical artifact to become living internal objects, embedded in Western culture.(440 pp.)
Through case studies and examples, Jill and David Scharff explain the development of their ideas over the last 30 years, including: psychoanalysis, child and adolescent therapy, family therapy, sex therapy, group therapy, group relations, attachment research, infant observation, trauma, applied chaos theory, and link theory. (423 pp.)
