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In 1952, Clara Thompson, observing the interpersonal turn in psychoanalysis, asserted that analysts could no longer suggest to patients that whatever feelings they expressed were simply displaced from their father or mother, but that analysts also must consider their own contribution to those feelings. From the beginning, interpersonal analysts were especially interested in how real experiences with other people, including the society at large, influence the patient and how the patient, in turn, affects others.
The Handbook of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis is the first compendium since 1978 on psychoanalytic theory and process from the descendants of the radical group of analysts who rejected Freudian drive theory, the centrality of the Oedipus complex, and a literal view of penis envy. This long-awaited volume is a treasure trove for analysts, therapists, and psychologists who wish to acquaint themselves with the American non-Freudian tradition in psychoanalysis. The book will be particularly refreshing for psychologists who are trying to understand more about unconscious processes and psychoanalysis, but who have rejected the inferences and metapsychology of other schools of psychoanalysis. The editors state in the Introduction that interpersonal psychoanalysis is a repudiation of orthodox biologism and a rejection of reified notions of psychic structure. This book offers analysts, therapists, and scholars an excellent understanding of people as primarily social creatures, always making meanings within a particular cultural context. Given this alternative view of human nature, the bold founders of this form of psychoanalysis forged a new conception of the powerful process Freud discovered and began to utilize.
Especially for analysts who are not familiar with the writings of the interpersonalists, the handbook provides an excellent consolidation of works on all the major topics in psychoanalysis. It