Overview

Full Product Details

9781732053373

Table of Contents

Reviews

Joseph Natterson's new and audacious book . . . . . . provides a theory for the praxis of therapeutic love . . . argues that the liberation of the loving self ought to be the goal and outcome of any therapy. . . . includes many clinical vignettes illustrating his method of working to liberate the loving self. . . . A short read, but a long think. --David James Fisher, PhD, Psychoanalyst; European cultural historian; Training & Supervising Analyst, Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis; Senior Faculty Member, New Center for Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles, Author of Bettelheim: Living and Dying, Cultural Theory and Psychoanalytic Tradition, and Romain Rolland and the Politics of Intellectual Engagement. The Loving Self is a path-breaking encounter with the vicissitudes of love as they express themselves in the psychotherapeutic process. In an original, compelling, deeply personal book, beautifully captured through clinical vignettes, Joseph Natterson reminds us that love, though often unintentionally obscured from our grasp, connects us to ourselves, to one anoth er, to the survival of our communities, and to the human race. The Loving Self stands alone in recentering psychoanalytic treatment as an aspiration, engaging both patient and therapist, to further liberate love, with the aim of helping one another establish deeper emotional ties to the interpersonal, social, political and environmental world that envelops us. Love, in the end, makes our worlds go round. A very inspiring and important read! --Jeffrey Prager, PhD, Author of Presenting the Past, Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Misremembering (Harvard), Co-Editor (with Anthony Elliott) of The Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalysis in the Social Sciences and the Humanities . One measure of a good book is its affordance of independent thinking--its capacity to transform without converting. One feels drawn into a benign circle, solicited for one's own thoughts in a dialogue that transcends intellectual and technical allegiances, yielding constant insight and surprise. Reading experiences of this kind depend on the author's achievement of a certain simplicity that arises only from deep practical wisdom and eschews unnecessary clutter. The Loving Self is such a book. Natterson revitalizes the old question about the meaning and function of the analyst's interpretive attitude. His central concept of the loving self is enacted in the very structure of his writing, organizing the reader into a particular relational configuration reminiscent of Loewald's insight that love involves a commitment to the emotional growth of an other. Natterson's graceful touch adds zest to everything important in the analytic tradition. --Charles Levin, PhD, Director, Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis (Quebec English Branch), Editor-in-chief, Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis

Author Information

Tab Content 6

Countries Available