Main description:

At the Interface of Transactional Analysis, Psychoanalysis, and Body Psychotherapy revolves around two intertwined themes: that of the critique and expansion of the theory and practice of transactional analysis and that of the generative richness discovered at the intersection of transactional analysis, psychoanalysis, and somatic psychotherapy.

William F. Cornell explores the work of psychotherapists and counsellors through the lenses of clinical theory, practice, supervision, and ethics. The reader is thus invited into a more vivid experience of being engaged and touched by this work's often deep, and at times difficult, intimacy. The book is grounded in the approaches of contemporary transactional analysis and psychoanalysis, using detailed case discussions to convey the flesh of these professional, and yet all too human, working relationships. Attention is paid to the force and richness of the transferential and countertransferential tensions that pervade and enliven the therapeutic process. Unconscious processes are viewed as fundamentally creative and life-seeking, with the vital functions of fantasy, imagination, and play brought into the foreground.

In the era of short-term, cognitive-behavioural, solution-focused, and evidence-based models of counselling and psychotherapy, At the Interface of Transactional Analysis, Psychoanalysis, and Body Psychotherapy seeks to demonstrate the power and creativity of longer-term, dynamically oriented work.

Contents:

Introduction: In Acknowledgement and Appreciation-Keeping Our Work Alive

Section I: Deepening Our Capacities for Therapeutic Work

Chapter 1) Opening to the Vitality of Unconscious Experience

Chapter 2) Play at your own risk: Games, play, and intimacy

Chapter 3) Fostering Freedom for Play, Imagination, and Uncertainty in Professional Learning Environments

Chapter 4) The Intricate Intimacies of Psychotherapy and Questions of Self-Disclosure

Chapter 5) Failing to Do the Job: When the Client Pays the Price for the Therapist's Countertransference

Chapter 6) Life Script: A Critical Review from a Developmental Perspective

Chapter 7) Babies, Brains, and Bodies: Somatic Foundations of the Child Ego State

Chapter 8) "My Body is Unhappy": Somatic Foundations of Script and Script Protocol

Chapter 9) Aspiration or Adaptation?: An Unresolved Tension in Eric Berne's Basic Beliefs

Chapter 10) What Do You Say if You Don't Say Unconscious?: Dilemmas Created for Transactional Analysis by Berne's Shift Away from the Language of Unconscious Experience

Chapter 11) Impasse and Intimacy: Applying Berne's Concept of Script Protocol, coauthored with N.M. Landaiche, III

Chapter 12) Nonconscious Processes and Self Development: Key Concepts from Eric Berne and Christopher Bollas, coauthored with N.M. Landaiche, III

Chapter 13) The Old Stone House: Eric Berne's Memories and Mourning for his Father's Life and Death

Section II: When Life Grows Dark

Chapter 14) Grief, Mourning, and Meaning: In a Personal Voice

Chapter 15) The Inevitability of Uncertainty, the Necessity of Doubt, and the Development of Trust

Chapter 16) In Conflict and Community: A Century of Turbulence Working and Living in Groups