Phenomenology, Uncertainty, and Care in the Therapeutic Encounter

Mark Leffert MD, has been on the faculty of five psychoanalytic institutes and has been a Training and Supervising Analyst at four of them. He has taught and supervised psychoanalysts, psychologists, and psychiatrists for forty years. He is the author of many papers and two previous books, Contemporary Psychoanalytic Foundations and The Therapeutic Situation in the 21st Century. Dr Leffert has been engaged in an interdisciplinary reformulation of clinical psychoanalysis drawing on postmodernism, neuroscience, network studies, and (among others), heuristics and biases. Present and future work focuses on phenomenology, care, healing, and the self. He is in private practice in Santa Barbara, California.

Once again, Leffert provides readers with the eclectic scholarship and gentle iconoclasm for which he is justly renowned. Here he sets himself the paradoxical task of theorizing the ‘inconvenient truth’ of a post-modern psychoanalysis bereft of certainties and grand theories. He deftly does this via a) an accessible account of phenomenology (including all you ever wanted to know about Husserl and Heidegger but never dared ask), in which what patients say at the outset of treatment they want to be different about their lives is taken with utmost seriousness b) showing how transference can be understood in terms of Kahnemanian heuristics and systematic biases c) acknowledging that care and palliation are no less important goals for therapists than elusive, and largely mythical, ‘cure’. Convincing clinical material, buttressed by contemporary neuroscience, keeps the reader’s feet on the ground throughout. A must-read for all broad-minded and self-reflexive therapists. - Professor Jeremy Holmes MD FRCPsych University of Exeter, UKPhenomenology, for Leffert, represents a retreat from the endless academic debates, the internecine professional rivalries, and the pseudoscientific pretense that all too often itnerfer with quality patient care... One hopes that Leffert continues his subversive campaign. - Geoffrey Cox, president of Alliant International University, PsycCritiquesPsychoanalytic theory and psychotherapeutic practice benefit from not taking anything for granted On the hand psychoanalytic training is more indoctrination than exploration with a limited interdisciplinary reach. Dr Lefferts book offers an elegant and eloquent corrective to the limitations of our business as usual approach – Arnold Richards, Editor Internationalpsychoanalysis.netThis important volume is an part of Leffert’s ongoing interdisciplinary odyssey to understand and enrich the therapeutic situation in today’s uncertain post-modern world. Leffert persuasively argues for the need for a phenomenologically-informed psychoanalysis, stripped of metapsychological paraphernalia. He investigates the relevance of complex systems and their properties from neurology to social networks in his characteristically clear and erudite way. Leffert explores ‘big picture’ issues while attending to theoretical and clinical details in his search for an effective therapy focusing on healing, care and what patients want.—Douglas Kirsner, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Deakin University, Melbourne. Author of Unfree Associations: Inside Psychoanalytic Institutes

• Acknowledgments; Introduction; Chapter 1 The self and its contexts; Chapter 2 Phenomenology and existentialism; Chapter 3 Psychoanalysis and Daseinanalysis; Chapter 4 The phenomenological unconscious; Chapter 5 The role of decisions made under uncertainty in clinical psychoanalysis; Chapter 6 Care and suffering in therapeutic situations; Chapter 7 So what; is; psychoanalysis, really, and what are its therapeutic goals and actions?;