Psychoanalytic Explorations of Embodied Relational Knowing

This book offers groundbreaking insights into relational theory, exploring the patient’s and the analyst’s longings to know, be known, and not known in psychoanalytic relationships, and the embodied nature of the healing process.Recognition of the patient’s unknowable uniqueness, which is not fully accessible by means of empathy, is shown to promote more ethical therapeutic practices. Although few psychoanalytic books have highlighted the work of the philosopher, Marcel Foucault, Brothers and Sletvold find much that is highly relevant in his work. They also demonstrate the powerful influence of culture, history, politics and world events on the therapeutic encounter.With an informed and compassionate perspective, this book is essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists regardless of their theoretical orientation.

Doris Brothers is a co-founder of the Training and Research in Intersubjective Self Psychology Foundation. She has served on boards of the International Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology and was co-editor of Psychoanalysis, Self and Context. Her four previously published books include Toward a Psychology of Uncertainty: Trauma-Centered Psychoanalysis. She practices in New York and Oslo.Jon Sletvold is the founding board director of the Norwegian Character Analytic Institute. He has published books and articles on the role of the body in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. He is the author of The Embodied Analyst: From Freud and Reich to Relationality (2014), winner of the Gradiva Award in 2015.