Interpersonal psychoanalytic perspectives on relevance, dismissal and self-definition / Arthur Feiner ; foreword by Edgar A. Levenson.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

The themes of relevance and dismissal are central to our relations with other people and, therefore, to our concept of our identity. These themes of relevance and dismissal pervade Arthur Feiner's exploration of the core ideas of interpersonal psychoanalysis and his use of them in his clinical practice. This particular branch of psychoanalysis, developed by Sullivan, Fromm, Fromm-Reichmann and Thompson, shifts the focus from explaining experience to describing it, with an emphasis on therapeutic interaction. Our identity, or self-definition, is at least partially constructed from early relationships. The impact of the analyst's words and behaviour on the patient is crucial. Feiner considers the therapeutic relationship both from the patient's perspective - vengeful responses to dismissal, restlessness and the experience of hope - and from the analyst's - deliberate 'misreading' as a form of intervention, the usefulness of errors, and the contradictions and difficulties inherent in supervising - taking an interpersonal psychoanalytic approach. Throughout he returns to his central themes, reiterating that the rage, anxiety and depression experienced by patients are expressions of the feeling of having been dismissed, of being no longer relevant.

Print version record.

Contents -- Foreword -- Introduction -- Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered -- Out of Our Minds -- Laughter Among the Pear Trees -- Restlessness of the Spirit -- Touch and the Genesis of Hope -- Countertransference and Misreading -- The Thrill of Error -- Contradictions in the Supervisory Process -- Subject Index -- Author Index

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