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Two patients in long-term intensive psychotherapy, both engaged at a deep transference level, are compared. The author explores two questions: First, 'What is essential for a therapeutic process to take place?'; and second, 'What contemporary theoretical models are useful in conceptualizing that process?' Six clinical/theoretical categories are delineated: (1) the quality of attachment to the therapist, (2) the nature of the transference, (3) interpretation, (4) patient and therapist personal attributes and life circumstances that facilitate and inhibit the process, (5) the responsibilities of both patient and therapist, and (6) how to conceptualize growth and what criteria to use to determine whether it has occurred. The final section discusses the self psychological theories that best explain these two patients: Kohut (selfobject theory and the nuclear self); Stern and the Boston Process Change Study Group (implicit relational knowing); Lachmann and Beebe (co-constructed interactions); and Shane, Shane, and Gayles (nonlinear systems theory). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relational psychoanalysis, a relatively new and evolving school of psychoanalytic thought, is considered by its founders to represent a “paradigm shift” in psychoanalysis. The relational approach, initiated by the publication of Jay Greenberg and Stephen Mitchell's book, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory in 1983, has developed into a movement with its own substantially separate literature. This paper reviews both the history and theoretical origins of the relational movement, as well as important theoretical premises and viewpoints now associated with the relational school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter discusses the author's involvement with contemporary self psychology. Beginning from a traditional Freudian background, the author's history is traced to her current psychoanalytic interest in applying infant research to adult treatment. A case example is provided illustrating the interweaving of the verbal/explicit and nonverbal/implicit dimensions of working with a patient traumatized following the World Trade Center disaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the integration of self psychology with findings from infant research and neuroscience. While Kohut's psychology of the self provides a useful theoretical model for psychoanalytic practice, aspects of infant research and neuroscience offer specificity and nuance to basic self-psychological concepts. Kohut proposed that self-psychological psychoanalysis ameliorates derailed development through patient–analyst interaction, while a listening stance of empathic immersion begins the curative process of derailed development and sets the stage for reparative psychoanalytic work. Findings from infant research delineate much more specifically the nature of attunement both in early mother–infant and analyst–patient interactions. Findings from neuroscientific research delineate how early mother–infant experiences are encoded in implicit memory and explicates the emotional substrate of affects and feelings. This emotional substrate exists at birth and provides a means of communication both in infancy and adulthood. Additionally, infant research delineates the mutuality of the interactive process. Thus, both infant research and neuroscience add subtlety and nuance to basic self-psychological concepts. This subtlety opens up new ways of understanding patients and expands the clinical repertoire. Three clinical vignettes demonstrate how this nuance and expansion of self-psychological concepts are applied in the context of an ongoing psychoanalytic treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]