Routledge The Search for a Relational Home: An intersubjective view of therapeutic action (Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series)

In The Search for a Relational Home, Chris Jaenicke gives the reader an inside view of what actually happens in psychotherapy and how change occurs. He describes how both participants – the patient and the therapist – feel, and how they affect each other. The reader is encouraged to vicariously partake in the process from the perspective of his or her own life experiences. The book describes the nature of therapeutic action through a radicalized version of intersubjective systems theory. It demonstrates how psychotherapy is an outcome of a highly personal encounter between two unique human beings, and how, while the goal of psychoanalysis is to help the patient, this can only be achieved inasmuch as both participants are willing to undergo transformation. Jaenicke clarifies how both successes and failures as well as personal strengths and weaknesses play a constitutive part in the psychotherapeutic process. The Search for a Relational Home also provides theoretical and practical guidelines for supervision. Jaenicke presents here a unique approach to the process of psychotherapy which will be vital reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and those in training as well as students in all fields of mental health. Review "The author presents two in-depth case studies of ‘Rafaela’ and ‘The Shadow Man’. He expresses himself in an emotional and frank manner and his own experience with these particular clients parallel his personal internal crisis. The language is reader friendly, although at times the psychoanalytic jargon could potentially risk alienating readers from a different therapeutic background. The author’s genuine fascination with his clients, and his honesty and courage to present a radical version of intersubjective systems theory, however, allows for a very interesting read." – Sandra Zecevic-Gonzalez, Private Practice "At the heart of the intersubjective model lies a radical and challenging reworking of the concept of transference. This is Chris Jaenicke’s final book in a trilogy. Here he powerfully describes through two of his own case studies his basic assumption that analysts ‘influence each therapeutic process with every fibre of (their) personalities’ and ‘any therapist’s difficulties as a human being may be bought forth as a matter of course by entering the realms of emotional distress and destruction of their patients’ (p89)…paralleling of his own internal world crises with two of his patients is movingly and powerfully documented…This is a humane and challenging book that shifts the psychoanalytic paradigm."– Gillian Ingram in Therapy Today' "The Search for a Relational Home: An Intersubjective View of Therapeutic Action is a book aimed at showing how an understanding of the patient-analyst dyad as a complex dynamic system deepens our grasp of the therapeutic process and therapeutic change. What is unique about the book is its emphasis on the critical importance of failure, both the patient’s and analyst’s, in furthering the therapeutic process. In his inimitable evocative and reader-friendly language, and with characteristic openness about his own emotional experiences, Jaenicke shows how the strengths and weaknesses, limitations, and sufferings of both participants become entangled and worked through. Punctuated with rich clinical illustrations, the book offers much wisdom to seasoned practitioners and trainees alike." – Robert D. Stolorow, PhD, author, World, Affectivity, Trauma: Heidegger and Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2011). ‘Chris Jaenicke’s The Search for a Relational Home is the third volume of his wonderful trilogy, devoted to an intersubjective view of the psychotherapeutic process. This excellent book, like its predecessors, is written in an informal, engaging style, and yet it deals with such profound and complex issues as the nature of cure and failure (offering an experiential redefinition of these concepts), the inevitable role of the analyst’s person