Love and Hate in the Analytic Setting: (The Library of Object Relations)

Passionate feelings of love and hate are stirred in psychotherapy. Paradoxically, these passions may either undermine the therapist catastrophically or serve as the crucible in which profound understanding is forged. Transferences and countertransferences of love and hate occur on a spectrum that includes unobjectionable negative and positive feelings, relatively benign forms of love and hate, and more malignant, intractable versions of love and hate that present formidable challenges to the therapist. Each of these variations is explored in different chapters of this book. Gender configurations, gender fluidity, adolescent transferences, the link between love and lust, and passive forms of hating are among the topics discussed. Most of all, the author, noted psychoanalyst Glen Gabbard, depicts what it is like to be in the eye of the hurricane when passions are aroused. He provides a practical yet theoretically sophisticated guide to the management of love and hate as they are experienced by both patient and therapist.

About the Author :
Glen O. Gabbard, M.D., is Bessie Walker Callaway Distinguished Professor of Psychoanalysis and Education in the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry and Mental Health Sciences at The Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas.

Review :
Love and Hate in the Analytic Setting is a major contribution to the psychoanalytic dialogue. This book establishes Glen Gabbard as the leading authority on the containment, management, and interpretation of experiences of intense love, pathologicalerotization, and hate in the transference-countertransference. Gabbard is without peer in his capacity to provide an undogmatic framework of ideas and a body of vivid clinical material with which the analytic clinician might productively navigate the treacherous waters of intense transference and countertransference love, hate, and sexualization. Dr. Gabbard candidly discusses the delicate line that he has had to learn to walk in his effort to listen to, and yet not act upon, the Siren song of the lovingor sexualized transference-countertransference and the lure of the patient's invitation to join in his/her hate-filled internal object world. Since, for Gabbard, transference is inseparable from countertransference and the intrapsychic inseparable from the intersubjective, there is no place outside of the analytic interaction from which to view the analytic drama safely. Gabbard brilliantly and courageously discusses the ways in which the psychodynamic psychotherapist must learn to contain and work with This is a useful book not only for analysts but for those who work with provocative and impulsive populations; these clinicians will find it both technically helpful and dynamically illuminating. Dr. Gabbard approaches the 'heats' of the analytical encounter-love or hate-with admirable aplomb. He provides a lucid and shrewd review of the analytical literature on the topic, bringing the reader into the heart of those intellectual passions attracted to this issue, while at the same time he expands his concept of 'erotic space' to reframe crucial issues of the transference and the countertransference. He is an engaging writer and the accounts of his own clinical dilemmas are a pleasure to read. This is an intelligent and important book that will soon serve as the benchmark for future work in this area. Love and Hate in the Analytic Setting is a major contribution to the psychoanalytic dialogue. This book establishes Glen Gabbard as the leading authority on the containment, management, and interpretation of experiences of intense love, pathological erotization, and hate in the transference-countertransference. Gabbard is without peer in his capacity to provide an undogmatic framework of ideas and a body of vivid clinical material with which the analytic clinician might productively navigate the treacherous waters of intense transference and countertransference love, hate, and sexualization. Dr. Gabbard candidly discusses the delicate line that he has had to learn to walk in his effort to listen to, and yet not act upon, the Siren song of the loving or sexualized transference-countertransference and the lure of the patient's invitation to join in his/her hate-filled internal object world. Since, for Gabbard, transference is inseparable from countertransference and the intrapsychic inseparable from the intersubjective, there is no place outside of the analytic interaction from which to view the analytic drama safely. Gabbard brilliantly and courageously discusses the ways in which the psychodynamic psychotherapist must learn to contain and work with intense experiences of love and hate from his or her inescapable position within the analytic crucible. This book represents current analytic thinking and practice at its creatively disciplined best.