Essays on Integrative Psychotherapy Developmental and Relational Perspectives
by
Richard G. Erskine
This book is a distinctive collection of essays on the theory and methods of a developmentally-based, relationally-focused integrative psychotherapy.
In an easy-to-read style, Richard Erskine elaborates on a relationally-focused psychotherapy for acute and cumulative neglect, dissociation, alcoholism, obsession, prolonged grief, as well as psychotherapy with couples. Detailed examples of actual psychotherapy sessions illustrate the therapeutic methods of both phenomenological and developmental inquiry as well as the significance of the psychotherapist's interpersonal involvement through acknowledgment, validation, normalization, and presence. Each chapter takes the reader into further depths of understanding the complexities of an in-depth psychotherapy. Erskine writes from the heart while drawing from over fifty years as a psychotherapist, supervisor, and trainer.
Essays on Integrative Psychotherapy vividly illustrates the interpsychic struggle of clients who engage in the schizoid process of relational withdrawal and live in loneliness, and will be essential reading for psychotherapists and psychoanalysts in practice and in training.
TABLE OF CONTENT:
Stimulus, Structure, and Relationship
Trauma, Dissociation, and a Reparative Relationship
Wayne: The Emptiness of the Unloved Child
Child Development in Integrative Psychotherapy
Contributions of Gestalt Therapy
An Integrative Psychotherapy of Obsession
Presence and Involvement
Relational Withdrawal, Internal Criticism, Social Façade
Psychotherapy of Relational Withdrawal
The Truth Shall Set You Free
Saying an Honest “Goodbye”
Relational Group Process
Contact and Relational Needs in Couple Therapy
Reflections on Supervision in Integrative Psychotherapy
Compassion, Hope, and Forgiveness
The Psychotherapist’s Myths, Dreams, and Realities
