Awakening the Dreamer: Clinical Journeys

Author(s) : Philip M. Bromberg

Awakening the Dreamer: Clinical Journeys

Book Details

  • Publisher : Analytic Press
  • Published : January 2006
  • Cover : Hardback
  • Category :
    Psychoanalysis
  • Catalogue No : 24618
  • ISBN 13 : 9780881634419
  • ISBN 10 : 0881634417
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In Awakening the Dreamer, Philip Bromberg continues the illuminating explorations into dissociation and clinical process begun in his seminal Standing in the Spaces (1998). Bromberg is among our most gifted clinical writers, especially in his unique ability to record peripheral variations in relatedness - those subtle, split-second changes that capture the powerful workings of dissociation and, as such, chart the changing self-states that analyst and patient bring to the moment. Three interrelated contentions weave their way through these essays. For Bromberg, a model of mind premised on the centrality of self-states and dissociation not only offers the optimal lens for comprehending and interpreting clinical data; it also provides maximum leverage for achieving true intersubjective relatedness. And finally, this manner of looking at clinical data offers the best vantage point for integrating psychoanalytic experience with the burgeoning findings of contemporary neuroscience, cognitive and developmental psychology, and attachment research.

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But, these essays are no esoteric attempt at theory construction for its own sake. Bromberg consistently brings the reader into the felt human experience at the heart of the clinical encounter. Dreams are approached not as texts in need of deciphering but as means of contacting genuine but not yet fully conscious self-states. From here, he explores how the patient's "dreamer" and the analyst's "dreamer" can come together to turn the "real" into the "really real" of mutative therapeutic dialogue. The "difficult," frequently traumatized patient is newly appraised in terms of tensions within the therapeutic dyad. Such patients, Bromberg finds, sense dangers within the dyad that the analyst unwittingly heightens. And then, there is the "haunted" patient who carries a sense of preordained doom through years of otherwise productive work - until the analyst can finally feel the patient's doom as his or her own. Laced with Bromberg's characteristic honesty, humor, and thoughtfulness, these essays elegantly attest to the mind's reliance on dissociation, in both normal and pathological variants, in the ongoing effort to maintain self-organization. "Awakening the Dreamer", no less than "Standing in the Spaces", is destined to become a permanent part of the literature on therapeutic process and change.

Table of Contents
Introduction: When Reality Blinks. Part I: On Self States. Bringing in the Dreamer. Playing with Boudaries. "The Gorilla Did It": Thoughts on the Real and the Really Real. Part II: Collisions and Negotiations. Potholes on the Royal Road: Or Is It an Abyss?Treating Patients with Symptoms, and Symptoms with Patience. The Analyst's "Self-Revelation": Not Just Permissable, but Necessary. Part III: Safe but Not Too Safe. One Need Not Be a House to Be Haunted: A Case Study. "Something Wicked This Way Comes": Where Psychoanalysis, Cognitive Science, and Neuroscience Overlap.

About the Author(s)

Philip M. Bromberg, Ph.D., is Training and Supervising Analyst, William Alanson White Institute, and Adjunct Clinical Professor of Psychology, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Co-Editor Emeritus of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Dr Bromberg serves on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, and Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis. He lectures widely throughout the United States and is actively involved in the training of mental health professionals.

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