Emotional Understanding Studies in Psychoanalytic Epistemology [Hardcover]

With a unique blend of clinical compassion and philosophical reflection, Donna M. Orange explores the nature and process of psychoanalytic understanding within the intimate and healing context of treatment. Disputing the traditional psychoanalytic emphasis on verbalization, Orange highlights the [i]emotional[/i] nature of psychoanalytic understanding. Because much of emotional understanding is tacit understanding, it requires the analyst's empathic participation in the patient's emotional predicament, and attention to the kinds of memories that precede and extend beyond words. Delineating the philosophical underpinnings of emotional understanding/m-/and illuminating the epistemology of the therapeutic enterprise/m-/this book is enlightening reading for all mental health professionals interested in psychodynamic theory and treatment.

In a remarkable and novel way, this book brings together contemporary psychoanalytic theories and clinically relevant aspects of philosophy to answer the question, `What is emotional understanding and how is it being communicated?' It is written in a clear and evocative style that reflects the book's message that understanding another can only be attained in a dialogue in which the participants are genuinely emotionally engaged. The book will richly reward the experienced as well as the novice in the practice of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. --Anna Ornstein, MD, Prof of Child Psychiatry, Co-Director, International Center for the Study of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology

With deceptive simplicity, Donna Orange explores here the basic premises that underlie psychotherapeutic effectiveness. Her collaborative model of the treatment process illuminates such bedrock issues as emotional memory, understanding and misunderstanding, and healing. In a voice consistent with her theoretical convictions, she moves fluidly from sharing her subjective emotional experiences to making intellectually incisilCv