Treatment of the Masochistic Personality: An Interactional-Object Relations Approach to Psychotherapy

By Cheryl Glickauf-Hughes and Glickauf-Hughes Cheryl

To love repeatedly in an unsatisfying and self-destructive way cripples many people. The dynamics that underlie this painful way of relating often escape clinical attention, and people with subtle yet pervasive masochistic problems often tumble miserably through life with an undetected disorder. The authors propose an object relations approach to psychotherapy with the masochistic personality. In treatment, insight into unconscious conflict is complemented by opportunities for the patient to experience the therapist as a new object offering new possibilities for growth. Patients are offered the opportunity for a corrective interpersonal experience, geared to helping them master unresolved developmental issues and developing more appropriate and satisfying interpersonal relationships.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1568213840
• ISBN13: 9781568213842
• Release Date: July 1977
• Publisher: Jason Aronson
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.09 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Winning by Losing

Rare and insightful understanding of the brutally defeated child whose trust and will were broken and of the self-defeating and self-destructive adult whose only expression of Self left is "longsuffering" passive-aggressive defiance and spite -- and "winning by losing." See also the extraordinarily insightful and compassionate Character Styles by Stephen M. Johnson.