Dimensions of Psychotherapy, Dimensions of Experience

How do the fundamental elements of experience impact on the practice of psychotherapy?

Dimensions of Psychotherapy, Dimensions of Experience explores the three basic elements of psychotherapy - time, space and number - summarising theory, setting it in context and bringing concepts to life with clinical illustrations.

Michael Stadter and David Scharff bring together contributions describing how each of these elements, as well as their simple and direct manifestations in the physical world, also combine to form the psychological dimensions of symbolic reality both in the inner world and in the transactional world. They also reveal how, in encounters between patient and therapist, the combination of inner worlds form a new, uniquely psychological, fourth dimension that saturates the activity and experience of the other three elements. This book aims to increase our understanding of the action of the three dimensions of psychotherapy by looking at the elements that constitute the setting and process in which clinicians engage every day. The contributors, all of whom are experienced psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, connect their thinking on the dimensions to clinical practice by illustrating their ideas with case material and examining their impact on general treatment issues.

This book will be useful to practicing psychotherapists and psychoanalysts and students of psychoanalysis and philosophy.

Michael Stadter is a clinical psychologist and a member of the faculty and Board of Directors of the International Psychotherapy Institute. He is also Clinical Psychologist-in-Residence at the Department of Psychology at the American University in Washington DC.

David E Scharff is Co-Director of the International Psychotherapy Institute and a psychoanalyst in private practice.