ABSTRACT
Over the past decades, Lawrence Friedman has emerged as one of the most erudite and provocative theoriss in contemporary psychotherapy. The Anatomy of Psychotherapy interweaves Friedman's major contributions to the analytic and psychiatric literature with extensive new material in arriving at an extraordinarily rich and nuanced appreciation of psychotherapy.
The Anatomy of Psychotherapy describes how the therapist makes use of theories and styles in order to achieve equilibrium under stress. This stress, according to Friedman, is related to the "absolute ambiguity" that is essential to psychotherapy. To cope with this ambiguity, the therapist alternates among three different roles, those of reader, historian, and pragmatic operator. Friedman examines these "disambiguating postures" in detail, paying special attention to their bearing on the therapist's narrative prejudice, the relativity of his knowledge, and the relationship of his work to natural science and hermeneutics.
Brilliantly constructed and masterfully written, The Anatomy of Psychotherapy traverses the same basic themes in each of its six sections. Readers who are interested in theory can hone in on relevant topics or the work of particular theorists. Readers seeking insight into the demands of daily clinical work, on the other hand, can bypass the systematic studies and immerse themselves in Friedman's engrossing reflections on the experience of psychotherapy. Best served will be those who ponder Friedman's writings and therapy as complementary meditations issuing from a single, unifying vision, one in which psychotherapy, in both its promise and frustrations, becomes a subtle interplay among theories about psychotherapy, the personal styles of psychotherapists, and the practical exigencies of aiding those in distress.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |2 pages
Introduction
part |88 pages
Theory and Practice: The Trouble with Psychotherapy
chapter |9 pages
Whatever Happened to the Therapist's Discomfort?
chapter |24 pages
Discomfort Reflected in Theory: The Therapeutic Alliance
chapter |6 pages
Looking to Theory for Help
chapter |15 pages
Other Uses of Theory
chapter |2 pages
Overview
part |56 pages
Practice Observed
chapter |3 pages
Leaving Theory Temporarily
chapter |22 pages
What Moves the Therapist?
chapter |4 pages
Therapy Tasks That Theory Must Explain
chapter |10 pages
Therapy Tasks: How the Therapist Makes Sense of the Patient
chapter |15 pages
Therapy Tasks: How the Patient Makes Sense of the Therapist
part |99 pages
Theory of the Mind: The Tool of Psychotherapy
chapter |4 pages
Why Bother with Theory of the Mind?
chapter |27 pages
The Historical Context
chapter |17 pages
Freud's Foothold
chapter |25 pages
Construction of Freud's Paradigmatic Theory
chapter |24 pages
Conclusion: The Nature and Function of a Theory of the Mind
part |177 pages
Debate About Theory of the Mind: Revisions
chapter |5 pages
Introduction
chapter |13 pages
Peterfreund's Information-Processing Theory
chapter |13 pages
Phenomenological Theory: Mind as a World of Representations
chapter |15 pages
Schafer's Action Language
chapter |14 pages
Levenson's Perspectivism
chapter |15 pages
Gendlin's Vitalism
chapter |18 pages
George Klein's Equilibrium Theory
chapter |9 pages
Piaget's General Project
chapter |17 pages
Piaget and Psychotherapy
chapter |21 pages
Kohut's Mixed Theory
chapter |13 pages
The Common Thread: Holism
chapter |22 pages
Summary: The Need to Balance Perception and Influence
part |99 pages
What is a Psychotherapist?
chapter |12 pages
Ambiguity as a Discipline
chapter |4 pages
Disambiguating Postures: General Considerations
chapter |5 pages
Disambiguating Postures: The Reading Imperative
chapter |24 pages
Disambiguating Postures: The Therapist's Historicism
chapter |34 pages
Disambiguating Postures: The Therapist as Operator
chapter |18 pages
How It Fits Together: Performable Model and Metaphor
part |39 pages
Implications