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Fosse, M. J. (2021). The many faces of polyamory: Longing and belonging in concurrent relationships. Routledge.

This volume offers a valuable and compelling account on how to approach polyamorous relationships from the clinical perspective. While there is no uniform answer, Dr. Fosse’s compassionate and discerning approach that combines relative neutrality, an open-minded embrace of nontraditional lifestyle choices, and skilful attention to countertransference dynamics is likely to be inspiring. Dr. Fosse exposes the dynamics of love, sex, jealousy, and compersion as they play out in lives of those interested in polyamory, and more broadly, consensual nonmonogamy. Her focus is on relationships worth having.

In this paper, I introduce and develop my concept of Body Words and show how they emerge in clinical process in inverse proportion to the Repetition Compulsion. So it is that I see the clinician’s task in every psychoanalytic treatment as involving a particular focus on the reclamation and growth of the availability of Body Words in both participants, which I illustrate in my work with Doreen. This treatment also demonstrates that the forward movement in therapy can be inhibited, as Russell counsels, by the therapist’s resistance to what the patient is feeling. Furthermore, I outline how my writing—whether daily session notes, associative diary entries, or more formally constructed journal articles—serves a self-supervisory function while also providing a sturdy container for evanescent process moments of Body Words. Once written, Body Words take their place as narrative, reflection, and memory, preserving experience for future reverie or conceptualization.

In Building Bridges, Stuart A. Pizer gives much-needed recognition to the central role of negotiation in the analytic relationship and in the therapeutic process. Building on a Winnicottian perspective that comprehends paradox as the condition for preserving an intrapsychic and relational "potential space," Pizer explores how the straddling of paradox requires an ongoing process of negotiation and demonstrates how such negotiation articulates the creative potential within the potential space of analysis.

In this paper we explore some of the ways one’s individual sexuality, one’s sexual fingerprint, embodies all of the potential for human experiencing in ourselves and in relationship: the driven and surrendering, the edges of passion and violation, the paradox of relationship and dissociation, attunement and personal desire. Our focus is on sexuality in the powerful, brain-changing interactions between patients and therapists in the treatment process.

This article explores how these two seemingly different conceptual and developmental frameworks—sexuality as a function of mind, and agency as a derivative of relational experience—may be compatible. Here, I examine the relationship of sexuality and the experience of agency in parent–child and analyst–patient relationships, and suggest that sexuality as such may yet have a central role in contemporary psychoanalytic thinking and in our understanding of the basic nature of psychic functioning.

The present study examines relationships between patient attachment and therapist countertransference in a large, naturalistic, longitudinal study of psychodynamic psychotherapy in a safety-net hospital. This study explored patterns in the relationship between therapist countertransference and patient attachment in two ways: (a) by studying cross sectional associations between patient-reported attachment and therapist-reported countertransference at 3 months into treatment, and (b) by studying if changes in patient-reported attachment over the course of psychotherapy are associated with changes in therapist-reported countertransference. In a sample of 101 therapy dyads, patients completed self-report attachment domains and therapists completed self-report countertransference measures 3 months following initiation of psychotherapy. Results showed initial significant positive associations between patient-rated attachment anxiety and therapist-rated “parental/protective,” “special/overinvolved,” and “overwhelmed/disorganized” countertransference. A sample of 119 therapy dyads (these included dyads in which therapists and patients completed measures at any point in time) was analyzed using multilevel modeling. Results showed that initial patient-rated attachment anxiety was associated with decreases in therapist-rated parental/protective and special/overinvolved countertransference over time. Decreases in patient-rated attachment anxiety were associated with subsequent increases in therapist reports of feeling overwhelmed/disorganized. These findings provide a greater understanding of how attending to patient attachment and therapist countertransference together may cofacilitate treatment and improve patient outcomes.

This paper explores the relationships between experienced defect and the subsequent shame and longing for recognition. A clinical vignette is presented in which a young woman sought treatment for her infidelity to her husband: a behavior she found totally mystifying and deeply troubling. Using Bollas’ concept of ‘‘the unthought known,’’ parallels are drawn between this patient, who was adopted at 2 weeks of age, and Oedipus’ experience of knowing and not knowing his fate. A case is made for the idea that we both avoid and seek to know what is unbearable about ourselves, including our sense of defects. One motivation for this is the longing to be seen, recognized, known, and, finally, know one’s self.

This paper explores questions relating to class differences between patient and analyst and how they might be addressed in the therapeutic dyad. A literature review indicates that a longstanding gap in discussions of social context for psychoanalytic endeavors is beginning to be addressed. The author suggests that issues of shame and envy, on the part of both patient and analyst, can lead to impasses and compromise treatment. Two vignettes are offered in which class differences intersect with more intimate aspects of intersubjective relating. The author employs self-disclosure as a way to foster genuine dialogue regarding the disparities that can impede our work as healers.