Coasting in the Countertransference (Psychoanalysis in a New Key Book Series)

Hirsch, Irwin

ISBN 10: 0881634808 / ISBN 13: 9780881634808

Published by The Analytic Press, 2008

About this Item

2008 1st paper edition and printing. Dampstain rippling on a few pages, yellow highlighting in first part of book (I didn't see anything after page 63 but might have missed something), one corner fold, a bit of denting, binding tight.

Seller Inventory # ABE-1775158533500

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Coasting in the Countertransference (Psychoanalysis in a New Key Book Series)
• Publisher: The Analytic Press
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0881634808
• ISBN 13: 9780881634808
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Good
• Dimensions: 1.37W x 15.19H x 22.91D centimeters 1.37 centimeters width by 15.19 centimeters height by 22.91 centimeters depth
• Weight: 340 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Winner of the 2009 Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic Scholarship!

Irwin Hirsch, author of Coasting in the Countertransference, asserts that countertransference experience always has the potential to be used productively to benefit patients. However, he also observes that it is not unusual for analysts to 'coast' in their countertransferences, and to not use this experience to help treatment progress toward reaching patients' and analysts' stated analytic goals. He believes that it is quite common that analysts who have some conscious awareness of a problematic aspect of countertransference participation, or of a mutual enactment, nevertheless do nothing to change that participation and to use their awareness to move the therapy forward. Instead, analysts may prefer to maintain what has developed into perhaps a mutually comfortable equilibrium in the treatment, possibly rationalizing that the patient is not yet ready to deal with any potential disruption that a more active use of countertransference might precipitate.

This 'coasting' is emblematic of what Hirsch believes to be an ever present (and rarely addressed) conflict between analysts’ self-interest and pursuit of comfortable equilibrium, and what may be ideal for patients’ achievement of analytic aims. The acknowledgment of the power of analysts’ self-interest further highlights the contemporary view of a truly two-person psychology conception of psychoanalytic praxis. Analysts’ embrace of their selfish pursuit of comfortable equilibrium reflects both an acknowledgment of the analyst as a flawed other, and a potential willingness to abandon elements of self-interest for the greater good of the therapeutic project.

About the Author

Irwin Hirsch lives and works in New York City. He teaches and/or supervises at five psychoanalytic training programs, and serves on four editorial boards. He has published over 70 psychoanalytic articles and reviews, and has presented at conferences internationally. He received his doctorate in clinical psychology at The University of Maryland, and his psychoanalytic training at the N.Y.U. Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy.