Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy Integration: An Evolving Synergy

Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy Integration traces the history of efforts to integrate psychoanalysis with other psychotherapeutic modalities, beginning with the early analysts, including Ferenczi and Rank, and continuing on to the present day. It explores the potential for integration made possible by contemporary developments in theory and technique that are fundamental to a relational psychoanalytic approach.

Editors Jill Bresler and Karen Starr bring together an array of valuable theoretical and clinical contributions by relationally oriented psychoanalysts who identify their work as integrative. The book is organized in four segments: theoretical frameworks of psychotherapy integration; integrating multiple models of psychotherapy into a psychoanalytically informed treatment; working with specific populations; the future of integration, exploring the issues involved in educating clinicians in integrative practice.

The contributions in this volume demonstrate that integrating techniques from a variety of psychotherapies outside of psychoanalysis can enrich and enhance psychoanalytic practice. It will be an invaluable resource for all practicing psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in training, particularly those with an interest in relational psychoanalysis and psychotherapy integration.

Jill Bresler is faculty, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and faculty and advisory board member of the Psychotherapy Integration Program at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies. Dr. Bresler is a clinical psychologist who maintains a private practice in New York City.

Karen Starr is author, with Lewis Aron, of A Psychotherapy for the People: Toward a Progressive Psychoanalysis, and author of Repair of the Soul: Metaphors of Transformation in Jewish Mysticism and Psychoanalysis. She is Clinical Supervisor at The Graduate Center, CUNY and Adjunct Faculty at Long Island University. Dr. Starr maintains a private practice in New York City and Great Neck, Long Island.