Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity and Difference: Navigating the Divide

Every day, clinicians encounter challenges to empathy and communication while struggling to assist patients with diverse life histories, character, sexuality, gender, psychopathology, cultural, religious, political, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. Most writing pertaining to ideas of similarity, discrepancy, and ‘the Other’ has highlighted differences. Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity and Difference: Navigating the Divide offers a different focus, emphasising points of contact, connection, and how divisions between people can be transcended. In-depth case material, astutely elucidated by diverse theoretical approaches, furnishes stimulating ideas and valuable suggestions for facilitating a meeting of minds and psychological growth in patients who might otherwise be difficult or impossible to engage. Exploring how psychoanalysts can navigate obstacles to understanding and communicating with suffering individuals, topics covered include: internal experience of likeness and difference in the patient; in the analyst; and how analysts can find echoes of themselves in patients. Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists will appreciate the importance and value of this wide-ranging, groundbreaking exploration of these insufficiently addressed dimensions of human experience.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Lori C. Bohm THE INTERNAL EXPERIENCE OF LIKENESS AND DIFFERENCE IN THE PATIENT Chapter 1: Identifying/Disidentifying Brent Willock Chapter 2: Negotiating the Different/Alike Divide in the Treatment of Shame Gladys Guarton Chapter 3: The Transition from Adolescence to Adulthood in Psychotic Patients and their Families: A Framework for Assessing Recovery Barri Belnap Chapter 4: Neuroticism is the Way Home Mark Egit Chapter 5 An Unpublishable Paper Harriette Kaley THE WORK OF THE THERAPIST TO FIND HIM OR HERSELF IN THE PATIENT Chapter 6 Reluctance to Finding Myself in the Other: Treating an Alleged Pedophile Susan Kolod Chapter 7 On Intersubjective Firsts in the Analytic Third: Becoming a Subject in the Presence of the Other Ionas Sapountzis CULTURAL, RACIAL, AND COGNITIVE/EMOTIONAL DIVIDES Chapter 8 Our Not-so-hidden Shame: Lack of Ethnic Diversity in the Field of Psychoanalysis John O’Leary Chapter 9 Finding their way Home: The Struggle of the Australian Aboriginal People to Become One People within One Janice A. Walters Chapter 10 The Autistic Core in Aboriginal Trauma: Breaking Down or Breaking Out of the Autistic Defence Norma Tracey Chapter 11 A Bi-Cultural Approach to Working Together: A Conversation about Cultural Supervision Trudy Ake & Sarah Calvert Chapter 12 Identity amongst Differences: A Personal Account of a Pakeha Psychologist Working in a New Zealand Maori Mental Health Service Ingo Lambrecht Chapter 13 The Good Son: Psychotherapy with a 65-year-old Man with the Diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome Susan Rose Chapter 14 Creativity, Identity, and Social Exclusion: Working with Traumatized Individuals Marilyn Charles INTERNAL EXPERIENCE OF LIKENESS AND DIFFERENCE IN THE THERAPIST Chapter 15 An autobiographical account of the analysis of an analyst who endured complex childhood trauma Johanna Tiemann Chapter 16 Same Old Story? Consistency and Change in the Analyst’s Work over Time Michael Stern Chapter 17 The Analyst as Patient: Working from Both Sides of the Divide Emily Fucheck Chapter 18 The Contrapuntal Play of Paradox: Likeness and Difference in the Theories of Otto Rank Claude Barbre Conclusions Rebecca Coleman Curtis

About the Author :
Brent Willock is President of the Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Board Member of the Canadian Institute for Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, and on the faculty of the Institute for the Advancement of Self Psychology. Rebecca Coleman Curtis is Professor of Psychology at Adelphi University, Faculty and Supervisor at the William Alanson White Institute and Supervisor at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies. Lori C. Bohm is Supervising Analyst, Faculty and former Director at the Center for Applied Psychoanalysis and Intensive Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Programs at the William Alanson White Institute. She is Psychotherapy Supervisor in the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program at the City University of New York.

Review :
"Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity and Difference: Navigating the Divide is a unique book. It tackles a topic of great importance to every psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, breathing fresh air and innovative ideas into an area where they are very much needed. In an era of multiculturalism, globalization, and diversity of all kinds, clinicians now, more than ever, have the opportunity and challenge of working to help an unprecedented variety of people. This volume explores the complex challenges these differences create for patients and mental health practitioners. Its fascinating exploration of so many dimensions of this crucial topic will leave readers with an enriched, deepened appreciation of similarities and differences, of bridging possibilities, and valuable insights on how to use this enhanced understanding to work ever more creatively with patients."-Hazel Ipp, Ph.D., Co-Editor in Chief, Psychoanalytic Dialogues; Past President, International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy.