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Standing in the Spaces: Essays on Clinical Process Trauma and Dissociation
Early in these essays, Bromberg contemplates how one might engage schizoid detachment within an interpersonal perspective. To his surprise, he finds that the road to the patient's disavowed experiences most frequently passes through the analyst's internal conversation, as multiple configurations of self-other interaction, previously dissociated, are set loose first in the analyst and then played out in the interpersonal field.
This insight leads to other discoveries. Beneath the dissociative structures seen in schizoid patients, and also in other personality disorders, Bromberg regularly finds traumatic experience -- even in patients not otherwise viewed as traumatized. This discovery allows interpersonal notions of psychic structure to emerge in a new light, as Bromberg arrives at the view that all severe character pathology masks dissociative defenses erected to ward off the internal experience of trauma and to keep the external world at bay to avoid retraumatization. These insights, in turn, open to a new understanding of dissociative processes as intrinsic to the therapeutic process per se. For Bromberg, it is the unanticipated eruption of the patient's relational world, with its push-pull impact on the analyst's effort to maintain a therapeutic stance, that makes possible the deepest and most therapeutically fruitful type of analytic experience.
Bromberg's essays are delightfully unpredictable, as they strive to keep the reader continually abreast of how words can and cannot capture the subtle shifts in relatedness that characterize the clinical process. Indeed, at times Bromberg's writing seems vividly to recreate the alternating states of mind of the relational analyst at work. Stirringly evocative in character and radiating clinical wisdom infused with compassion and wit, Standing in the Spaces is a classic destined to be read and reread by analysts and therapists for decades to come.
This insight leads to other discoveries. Beneath the dissociative structures seen in schizoid patients, and also in other personality disorders, Bromberg regularly finds traumatic experience -- even in patients not otherwise viewed as traumatized. This discovery allows interpersonal notions of psychic structure to emerge in a new light, as Bromberg arrives at the view that all severe character pathology masks dissociative defenses erected to ward off the internal experience of trauma and to keep the external world at bay to avoid retraumatization. These insights, in turn, open to a new understanding of dissociative processes as intrinsic to the therapeutic process per se. For Bromberg, it is the unanticipated eruption of the patient's relational world, with its push-pull impact on the analyst's effort to maintain a therapeutic stance, that makes possible the deepest and most therapeutically fruitful type of analytic experience.
Bromberg's essays are delightfully unpredictable, as they strive to keep the reader continually abreast of how words can and cannot capture the subtle shifts in relatedness that characterize the clinical process. Indeed, at times Bromberg's writing seems vividly to recreate the alternating states of mind of the relational analyst at work. Stirringly evocative in character and radiating clinical wisdom infused with compassion and wit, Standing in the Spaces is a classic destined to be read and reread by analysts and therapists for decades to come.
376 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 26, 2022
Bromberg's understanding of the complexities of the psyche, it's multiplicity and relational basis/need, surpasses most. He expresses with clarity and simplicity - as much as is possible anyway - how trauma and neglect can shape our minds, such that we can be lost/dead to our self, and how to recover life, in relationship.
His understanding of the centrality of dissociative processes in what are understood as personality disorders is different from most theorizing out there. Such understanding provides greater possibility in working with people displaying such characteristics.
For those interested in how to work with transference and countertransference, the entire book addresses these processes. I found it to increase my confidence in working with people navigate such challenges.
His clinical examples are honest and reveal his humanness.
This book is a valuable read for any therapist regardless of one's adopted orientation. At the heart it is message and example of how to be with another in a compassionate and open way, such that they can navigate the inner obstacles (however formed) to greater peace and 'sanity'.
His understanding of the centrality of dissociative processes in what are understood as personality disorders is different from most theorizing out there. Such understanding provides greater possibility in working with people displaying such characteristics.
For those interested in how to work with transference and countertransference, the entire book addresses these processes. I found it to increase my confidence in working with people navigate such challenges.
His clinical examples are honest and reveal his humanness.
This book is a valuable read for any therapist regardless of one's adopted orientation. At the heart it is message and example of how to be with another in a compassionate and open way, such that they can navigate the inner obstacles (however formed) to greater peace and 'sanity'.
April 21, 2020
I came for the painstakingly rendered phenomenology of schizoid character, but I stayed for the pleasure of witnessing the intellectual evolution of one of contemporary psychoanalysis' most humane and stimulating voices. Being a collection of papers, there is inevitably repetition among the chapters, but each new restatement or reformulation of a prior idea helped me further grasp their relevance as clinical truths. Bromberg shares observations on character, dissociation, multiple and illusory selfhood, perception, the body, and more without ever appearing to devote a paper simply to a theoretical deep dive on any one subject. Instead, they are seamlessly weaved together as part of a truly interlocking whole, much greater than the sum of its (dissociated) parts. That he is able to do all of this while keeping it perpetually clinical is icing on the cake.
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August 16, 2007liz hirky recommended this one.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews