Moving Beyond the Comfort Zone in Psychotherapy - Hardcover

Bridges, Nancy A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0765703440 ISBN 13: 9780765703446

Publisher: Jason Aronson, Inc., 2004

Synopsis

Making emotional contact and inviting patients to use therapeutic relationships for their relational and developmental aims is a risky and intimate proposition. But, as the author of this book argues, therapists must be willing to engage deeply with patients to work from within the relationship extending the therapeutic relationship to reach the private experience of self and other and offer new relational experience. Moving beyond traditional thinking, the author presents a relational approach that integrates psychoanalytic thinking with the latest findings from infant research to give therapists the theoretical framework to orient the treatment and maintain psychic equilibrium and safety during times of arousing and destabilizing affect and relational scenarios. A therapeutic stance, which is fluid and open to intrapsychic and interpersonal influence, allows for the experience and elaboration of complex unconscious affects and shifting points of identification. Compelling clinical narratives bring the reader into the consulting room and show how the therapist may forge deep emotional connection within a bounded therapeutic relationship that relies upon mutual influence and self-revelation and opens up relational space to ultimately rearrange a patient's experience of self and other.

About this title

About the Author

Nancy A. Bridges, LICSW, BCD is an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance and associate clinical professor at Smith College School for Social Work. She maintains a private psychotherapy and consultation practice.

From the Inside Flap

"Wise as well as keen, this valuable book shows us the essential conditions for effective work."
--Dr. Leston Havens, Harvard Medical School and The Cambridge Hospital

"Nancy Bridges reminds us all that erotic feelings and fantasies permeate the increasingly intimate relationships that patients and therapists construct together over the course of treatment. There is no more useful lesson that contemporary therapists can learn."
--Gerald Schamess, Smith College School for Social Work

"Following in the heartfelt and highly empathic tradition of clinicians like Searles, Coltart, and Russell, Nancy Bridges makes us feel deeply about the therapeutic process and stimulates our intellectual curiosity about why and how we intervene. She says we must be knocked off our perches routinely if the process goes well. And she does not hesitate to provide dozens of case studies where she backs up her theoretical stand with detailed descriptions of actual interventions with her patients. Bridges' writing style is both accessible and emotionally engaging. "Moving Beyond the Comfort Zone in Psychotherapy" succeeds in the challenging task of making the reader comfortable with the notion of being uncomfortable as an essential part of the process. I highly recommend this book for everyone who is invested in translating relational theory into practice."
--Karen J. Maroda, Ph.D.

"Equipped with the best of traditional psychodynamic theory and new insights from infancy research and the relational perspective, Nancy Bridges takes her readers on a journey into the largely unexplored affective interior of the clinical encounter. Compelling case vignettes illuminate the shadowy recesses of such phenomena as therapeutic aggression, destabililzing sexual and aggressive arousal in both patient and clinician, the risks and rewards of therapist self-revelation, and the therapeutic management of exceptional patient requests. Joining Bridges on her courageous excursion beyond the clinical comfort zone is well worth the trip for beginners and seasoned clinicians alike."
--Jeffrey Applegate, Ph.D., Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr College

"Nancy Bridges takes on the difficult topic of therapists' intense affective and erotic feelings about patients. She provides a balanced,broad -ranging rich discussion including the use of supervision and consultation. It will be an invaluable resource for therapists and their teachers."
--Malkah Notman, Harvard Medical School

Edition details

• Publisher: Jason Aronson, Inc.
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0765703440
• ISBN 13: 9780765703446
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208