Phenomenology, Uncertainty, and Care in the Therapeutic Encounter

Phenomenology, Uncertainty and Care in the Therapeutic Encounter is the latest in a series of books where Mark Leffert explores the therapeutic encounter as both process and situation; looking for evidence of therapeutic effectiveness rather than accepting existing psychoanalytic concepts of theory or cure without question. Mark Leffert focuses on the uncomfortable fact that analysts and therapists can and do make many mistaken assumptions and false moves within their clinical practice, and that there is a tendency to ignore the significant levels of uncertainty in what they do. Beginning with a discussion of the phenomenology of the self and its relations with the world, the book moves on to explore the notion that interdisciplinary discourse both opens up possibilities in the therapeutic encounter but also imposes healthy constraints on what can be thought or theorized about psychoanalytically. Phenomenology, Uncertainty and Care in the Therapeutic Encounter contributes a new understanding of familiar material and brings a new focus to the care-giving and healing aspects of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy leading to a shift in the analyst’s identity from that of one who analyses to one who cares for and heals. This book will be of interest to Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, neuroscientists and academics in the fields of psychiatry, comparative literature and literature and the mind.

About the Author

Mark Leffert MD, has been on the faculty of five psychoanalytic institutes and has been a Training and Supervising Analyst at four of them. He has taught and supervised psychoanalysts, psychologists, and psychiatrists for forty years. He is the author of many papers and two previous books, Contemporary Psychoanalytic Foundations and The Therapeutic Situation in the 21st Century. Dr Leffert has been engaged in an interdisciplinary reformulation of clinical psychoanalysis drawing on postmodernism, neuroscience, network studies, and (among others) heuristics and biases. Present and future work focuses on phenomenology, care, healing, and the self. He is in private practice in Santa Barbara, California.