Sandra Sherman – författare

Psychotherapy and Personal Change: Two Minds in a Mirror offers unique day-to-day accounts of patients undergoing psychotherapy and what happens during "talk therapy" to startle the complacent, conscious mind and expose the unconscious. It is a candid, moment-by-moment revelation of how the therapist’s own memories, feelings, and doubts are often as much a factor in the process as those of the patient.

In the process of healing, both the therapist and the patient reflect on each other and on themselves. As the therapist develops empathy for the patient, and the patient develops trust in the therapist, their shared memories, feelings, and associations interact and entwine – almost kaleidoscopically – causing each to ask questions of the other and themselves. In this book, Dr. Friedberg reveals personal insights that arose as he recalled memories to share with patients. These insights might not have arisen but for the therapy, which operates in multiple directions as patient and therapist explore the present, the past, and the unknown. Readers will see the therapist – like the patient – as a complex, vulnerable human being influenced by parents, colleagues, and friends, whose conscious and unconscious minds ramify through each other. It is a truism of psychotherapy that in order to commit to the process, whatever the reservations or misconceptions, one must understand that therapy is not passive. The patient must expect to become personally involved with the therapist. The patient learns about the therapist even as the therapist helps the patient to gain insight into him- or herself. Psychotherapy and Personal Change shows how this exchange develops and how each actor is affected.

Through specific examples, the book raises the reader’s understanding of what to expect from psychotherapy and enhances his/her insight into therapy that he or she may have had already.

Psychotherapy and Personal Change: Two Minds in a Mirror offers unique day-to-day accounts of patients undergoing psychotherapy and what happens during "talk therapy" to startle the complacent, conscious mind and expose the unconscious. It is a candid, moment-by-moment revelation of how the therapist’s own memories, feelings, and doubts are often as much a factor in the process as those of the patient.

In the process of healing, both the therapist and the patient reflect on each other and on themselves. As the therapist develops empathy for the patient, and the patient develops trust in the therapist, their shared memories, feelings, and associations interact and entwine – almost kaleidoscopically – causing each to ask questions of the other and themselves. In this book, Dr. Friedberg reveals personal insights that arose as he recalled memories to share with patients. These insights might not have arisen but for the therapy, which operates in multiple directions as patient and therapist explore the present, the past, and the unknown. Readers will see the therapist – like the patient – as a complex, vulnerable human being influenced by parents, colleagues, and friends, whose conscious and unconscious minds ramify through each other. It is a truism of psychotherapy that in order to commit to the process, whatever the reservations or misconceptions, one must understand that therapy is not passive. The patient must expect to become personally involved with the therapist. The patient learns about the therapist even as the therapist helps the patient to gain insight into him- or herself. Psychotherapy and Personal Change shows how this exchange develops and how each actor is affected.

Through specific examples, the book raises the reader’s understanding of what to expect from psychotherapy and enhances his/her insight into therapy that he or she may have had already.

Winner of the 2022 Gradiva® Award for Best Book – Historic Moment for Reflection!

This book offers real-time, intimate reflections on Dr. Friedberg’s patients as they struggle with COVID-19 and its disruptive, dispiriting fallout.

Through a Screen Darkly identifies the psychological distress caused by the pandemic, examining how the particular elements of COVID-19 – its ability to be spread by those who seem not to have it, its intractability, the long-term uncertainty that it engenders – leave even relatively stable people shaken and unsure of the future. The book examines how, amidst radical uncertainty and the prospect of massive social change, such people learn to become resilient. The main theme of the book is that, of necessity, we learn to adapt. Though we still can only see "darkly," we can call on the resources that we have, as well as those we can reasonably acquire, so as to retain a sense of our dignity and purpose. Through a Screen Darkly examines what is possible now as the pandemic runs its course. It makes no predictions of how all this will ultimately play out, but offers a time capsule of how people have coped with a disease that landed suddenly and that we still do not fully understand.

Offering a series of intense encounters with worried, traumatized people, this book will be invaluable to in-training and practicing psychiatrists, as it points to the several possible directions for our national, psychological recovery from the pandemic.

Winner of the 2022 Gradiva® Award for Best Book – Historic Moment for Reflection!

This book offers real-time, intimate reflections on Dr. Friedberg’s patients as they struggle with COVID-19 and its disruptive, dispiriting fallout.

Through a Screen Darkly identifies the psychological distress caused by the pandemic, examining how the particular elements of COVID-19 – its ability to be spread by those who seem not to have it, its intractability, the long-term uncertainty that it engenders – leave even relatively stable people shaken and unsure of the future. The book examines how, amidst radical uncertainty and the prospect of massive social change, such people learn to become resilient. The main theme of the book is that, of necessity, we learn to adapt. Though we still can only see "darkly," we can call on the resources that we have, as well as those we can reasonably acquire, so as to retain a sense of our dignity and purpose. Through a Screen Darkly examines what is possible now as the pandemic runs its course. It makes no predictions of how all this will ultimately play out, but offers a time capsule of how people have coped with a disease that landed suddenly and that we still do not fully understand.

Offering a series of intense encounters with worried, traumatized people, this book will be invaluable to in-training and practicing psychiatrists, as it points to the several possible directions for our national, psychological recovery from the pandemic.

Drawing on a range of clinical cases, Towards Happiness presents an engaging, insightful look at how we define and achieve happiness in core aspects of our lives: work and money, wellness and personal growth, sex and love, family and friendship, and aging.

The book includes a series of essays by Dr. Ahron Friedberg, a prominent Manhattan psychiatrist, concerning how his patients sought to achieve greater happiness during challenging periods of their lives, and how as a consequence they grew personally and professionally. Each chapter considers a core topic through the lens of Dr. Friedberg’s practice, demonstrating how patients worked through difficult, sometimes chronic personal issues. Throughout, there are useful summaries of key points. While candidly acknowledging that each life is different, Towards Happiness offers practical examples that can enhance readers’ efforts to achieve greater levels of happiness and reorient their lives towards a deeper capacity for happiness.

Towards Happiness offers honest insights into the compromises, sacrifices, and resulting degrees of success that characterize pursuing happiness, and will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, clinical psychologists, and other mental health professionals. It will also be useful reading for anyone seeking to understand the achievement of happiness in their own lives.

Drawing on a range of clinical cases, Towards Happiness presents an engaging, insightful look at how we define and achieve happiness in core aspects of our lives: work and money, wellness and personal growth, sex and love, family and friendship, and aging.

The book includes a series of essays by Dr. Ahron Friedberg, a prominent Manhattan psychiatrist, concerning how his patients sought to achieve greater happiness during challenging periods of their lives, and how as a consequence they grew personally and professionally. Each chapter considers a core topic through the lens of Dr. Friedberg’s practice, demonstrating how patients worked through difficult, sometimes chronic personal issues. Throughout, there are useful summaries of key points. While candidly acknowledging that each life is different, Towards Happiness offers practical examples that can enhance readers’ efforts to achieve greater levels of happiness and reorient their lives towards a deeper capacity for happiness.

Towards Happiness offers honest insights into the compromises, sacrifices, and resulting degrees of success that characterize pursuing happiness, and will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, clinical psychologists, and other mental health professionals. It will also be useful reading for anyone seeking to understand the achievement of happiness in their own lives.

Life Studies in Psychoanalysis consists of four psychoanalytic studies, each representing a patient’s course of treatment over several years.

These studies demonstrate how love, in an array of forms, is refracted through the process of psychoanalysis, which unfolds over time and reveals the complexities of human desire. The cases presented here cover topics including repressed homosexuality, a taboo desire for a sibling, obsession with a fantasy, an Oedipus complex, and transferences that become an initial obstacle to treatment. As the studies proceed, each renders the nonlinear progress of treatment, as layer upon layer of a patient’s issues are brought to light and the patient slowly, often reluctantly, comes to terms with these issues. Dr. Ahron Friedberg offers professionals techniques for encouraging patients to remain in treatment when they become resistant, demoralized, or feel like they have hit a wall.

Ultimately, this book demonstrates how some patients, troubled by romantic, sexualized, fantasized, illicit, and/or uncontrollable desire, learn through psychoanalysis to accommodate their desires to what is possible and permissible in the lives that they otherwise inhabit. In this sense, the studies involve journeys from a place characterized by the epiphenomena of troubled love – grief, guilt, frustration – to one in which, through enhanced self-awareness, patients understand the sources and implications of their motivations. They come to understand why love has seemed like a minefield, and begin to find a more fulfilling path through it.

Life Studies in Psychoanalysis will be of great interest to psychoanalysts in practice and in training, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, and readers looking for insight into the analytic process.

Life Studies in Psychoanalysis consists of four psychoanalytic studies, each representing a patient’s course of treatment over several years.

These studies demonstrate how love, in an array of forms, is refracted through the process of psychoanalysis, which unfolds over time and reveals the complexities of human desire. The cases presented here cover topics including repressed homosexuality, a taboo desire for a sibling, obsession with a fantasy, an Oedipus complex, and transferences that become an initial obstacle to treatment. As the studies proceed, each renders the nonlinear progress of treatment, as layer upon layer of a patient’s issues are brought to light and the patient slowly, often reluctantly, comes to terms with these issues. Dr. Ahron Friedberg offers professionals techniques for encouraging patients to remain in treatment when they become resistant, demoralized, or feel like they have hit a wall.

Ultimately, this book demonstrates how some patients, troubled by romantic, sexualized, fantasized, illicit, and/or uncontrollable desire, learn through psychoanalysis to accommodate their desires to what is possible and permissible in the lives that they otherwise inhabit. In this sense, the studies involve journeys from a place characterized by the epiphenomena of troubled love – grief, guilt, frustration – to one in which, through enhanced self-awareness, patients understand the sources and implications of their motivations. They come to understand why love has seemed like a minefield, and begin to find a more fulfilling path through it.

Life Studies in Psychoanalysis will be of great interest to psychoanalysts in practice and in training, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, and readers looking for insight into the analytic process.