Routledge Trauma and Countertrauma, Resilience and Counterresilience: Insights from Psychoanalysts and Trauma Experts (Psychoanalysis in a New Key Book Series)

Treating traumatized patients takes its toll on the treating clinician, giving rise over time to what Richard B. Gartner terms countertrauma in the psychoanalyst or therapist. Paradoxically, a clinician may also be imbued with a sense of optimism, or counterresilience, after learning how often the human spirit can triumph over heartbreakingly tragic experiences. Trauma and Countertrauma, Resilience and Counterresilience brings together a distinguished group of seasoned clinicians, both trauma specialists and psychoanalysts. Their personal reflections show what clinicians all too rarely dare to reveal: their personal traumatic material. They then discuss how they develop models for acknowledging, articulating, and synthesizing the countertrauma that arises from long-term exposure to patients’ often-harrowing trauma. Writing openly, using viscerally affecting language, the contributors to this exceptional collection share subjective and sometimes intimate material, shedding light on the inner lives of people who work to heal the wounds of psychic trauma. By the same token, many of these clinicians describe how working intimately with traumatized individuals can affect the listener positively, recounting how patients’ resilience evokes counterresilience in the therapist, allowing the clinician to benefit from ongoing contact with patients who deal bravely with horrific adversity. Paradoxically, a clinician may be imbued with a sense of optimism after learning how often the human spirit can triumph over heartbreakingly tragic experiences. Trauma and Countertrauma, Resilience and Counterresilience will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, and trauma experts, offering a valuable resource to those beginning their careers in mental health work, to teachers and supervisors of trauma therapists, to experienced clinicians struggling with burnout, and to anyone who wants to understand the psychotherapeutic process or indeed the human condition. Review "This psychoanalytic synthesis of clinical expertise and conceptual reach goes beyond time-honored formulations, communicating a timeless but previously untapped reservoir of coherent wisdom. Its originality and unique emphasis on resiliency to trauma are embedded in the historical seedlings of psychoanalysis. Trauma and Countertrauma, Resilience and Counterresilience lingers within you long after you read it and place it lovingly on your desk, available for return engagements. Individual chapters are breathtaking tributes to Richard Gartner's widely celebrated ability to mutually engage, recognize, and expand the mind and soul of "self" and "other." Discover this groundbreaking contribution for yourself."-Philip Bromberg, Ph.D., Author, The Shadow of the Tsunami. "This important book presents an impressive array of compassionate insight on the complexities of trauma therapists’ countertransference to their patients―both countertraumatic and counterresilient― from some of the foremost leaders in the field. The work we do with trauma survivors deeply affects who we are and how we function, both in and outside the office. All mental health professionals who work with trauma survivors could benefit from having this volume with the combined wisdom of such diverse master clinicians on hand. Offering guidance and remedies, this excellent in-depth compilation should make a valuable impact on training as well as potentially lead to more successful therapy outcomes."-Joan M. Cook, Ph.D.,Yale School of Medicine, 2016 President, Division of Trauma Psychology (56) of the American Psychological Association. "Richard Gartner’s book of essays by trauma practitioners is an important contribution to the realities of working with the psychologically traumatized. With different voices and experiences, the contributors sing together in tune and with harmony about the challenges of this work and ways of thriving and rejoicing."-Charles R. Figley, Ph.D., Tulane