Structures of Subjectivity: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Phenomenology and Contextualism

By George E. Atwood and Robert D. Stolorow

Book Overview

Structures of Subjectivity: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Phenomenology and Contextualism, is a revised and expanded second edition of a work first published in 1984, which was the first systematic presentation of the intersubjective viewpoint - what George Atwood and Robert Stolorow called psychoanalytic phenomenology - in psychoanalysis. This edition contains new chapters tracing the further development of their thinking over the ensuing decades and explores the personal origins of their most essential ideas.

In this new edition, Atwood and Stolorow cover the philosophical and theoretical assumptions of psychoanalysis and present a broad approach that they have designated phenomenological contextualism. This approach addresses personal subjective worlds in all their richness and idiosyncrasy and focuses on their relational contexts of origin and therapeutic transformation.

Structures of Subjectivity covers the principles guiding the practice of psychoanalytic therapy from the authors' viewpoints and includes numerous detailed clinical case studies. The book will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, practitioners of psychotherapy, psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, and social workers. It will also be of interest to scholars and students with an interest in psychoanalytic theory and practice, and its philosophical premises.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415713889
• ISBN13: 9780415713887
• Release Date: May 2014
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 158 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

a clear, readable intro

Thanks to what I've been taught, I began my studies in psychoanalytic intersubjective theory with the bias that the focus would be on between rather than within. This book avoids that error by placing even emphasis on what happens inside the patient and between patient and therapist. The authors blend self psychology, object relations, and other fields to lay out an elegant exploration of interacting subjectivities.The conceptualization of psychopathology as either pathological structure OR missing psychic structure is particularly helpful and shows the common ground between self psychology (which tends to see things in terms of disintegration) and object relations (which at its worst regards the patient as a person full of toxic objects...a convenient notion when the therapy isn't going well!). The authors also contend that selfobject transferences aren't so much a type of transference as a dimension that runs through all transferences--indeed, all relationships to varying degrees.The book starts out with a lot of philosophy, in order to establish a context for perspectives presented later. Some of it was interesting, but most a rehash. The only real problem I had with this book is that it wasn't long enough. So I guess I'll have to read more books by these authors.