Product Description

An extraordinary depiction of one analyst's efforts to receive and respond to the vivid impressions of her patients raw and sometimes even unmentalized experiences as they are highlighted in the transference-countertransference connection. Mitrani attempts to feel, suffer, mentally transform, and, finally, verbally construct for and with the patient possible meanings for those immediate versions of lifes earliest experiences as they are re-enacted in the therapeutic relationship. Mitrani uses insights from this therapeutic work to contribute to the metapsychology of British and American object relations as well as to the psychoanalytic theory of technique. In these eleven essays, she masterfully integrates the work of Klein, Winnicott, Bion, and Tustin as she leads us on an expedition through primitive emotional territories. She clears the way toward detecting and understanding the survival function of certain pathological manoeuvers deployed by patients when confronted by unthinkable anxieties. In her vivid accounts of numerous clinical cases, she provides and demonstrates the tools needed to effect a transformation of unmentalized experiences within the context of the therapeutic relationship. Throughout her writings, she warns of some of the pitfalls we may encounter along the way.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #260792 in Books
• Published on: 2008-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .90" h x 5.70" w x 8.90" l, 1.10 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 330 pages

Review
Dr Mitrani has that gift. Picking up where Tustin and the other pioneers left off, she provides a vivid and satisfying scholarly vision of the earliest mental experience. Rich with clinical example, her findings are presented lucidly and with flair. --Harold N. Boris

Dr Mitrani's focus in the current genre of primitive emotional states is cogent, topical, and imaginatively integrative. She seamlessly weaves her clinical and theoretical threads through a vast array of contributions on the subject (Tustin, Bion, Klein, Winnicott, Bick, Anzieu, Ogden, and so many others), but it is Tustin who is her north star, and this book represents an elegant appreciation of her work as well as an imaginatively creative extension of it. The numerous and beautifully detailed clinical illustrations give the book a high degree of credibility. --James S. Grotstein

'A Framework for the Imaginary' features richly detailed clinical exposition seamlessly alloyed with exceptional scholarship. Dr Mitrani is a gifted teacher, whose steady aim is to augment the clinician's capacity to tolerate and integrate diverse theoretical positions. --Judith K. Welles

About the Author
Dr Judith Mitrani trained as a clinical psychologist and a psychoanalyst in Los Angeles. In her private practice, she specializes in both the treatment and supervision of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy with adults and children.