Psychodynamic Psychotherapy in South Africa
Contexts, theories and applications
- Publication Date: 2013
- Dimensions and Pages: 220 x 150 mm, 304 pp
- EAN: 978 1 86814 603 1
- Paperback EAN: 978 1 86814 603 1
- Rights: World
- Recommended Price (ZAR): 350.00
- Recommended Price (USD): 34.95
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy in South Africa will touch its readers and challenge them to think and feel beneath the surface of South African life. It is a must-read for anyone concerned with individual and social change in the South African context. —Carol Long, Associate Professor & Clinical Psychologist, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
In a world struggling to face and embrace the otherness that marks our common humanity, South African experience invites us to recognize and come to grips with trauma and with the universal struggle for recognition and meaning so essential to healthy living.
—Marilyn Charles, ABPP The Austen Riggs Centre, Co-Chair, The Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, Training Analyst, Michigan Psychoanalytic Council and Chicago Centre for Psychoanalysis
This book takes the reader on a journey through the sensitive and often painful realities of contemporary South African life. Offering a fresh and innovative perspective on psychodynamic psychotherapy, it captures the possibilities of using psychodynamic theory in service of progressive and socially relevant application.
Psychoanalysis as a long term modality is inaccessible to the average South African. In this book the authors describe how psychoanalytically orientated or psychodynamic psychotherapy can be practiced as a short-term endeavour and applied to contemporary issues facing the country. Psychodynamic work is currently undertaken by clinical psychologists, therapists, clinicians, trainers, teachers, clinical supervisors, consultants and researchers working in university settings, state hospitals, community projects, private practice and research. The debates, clinical issues, therapeutic practice and nature of research covered in the book are widely representative of the work being done in the country.
The need for shorter term therapy models and evidence-based interventions is as acute in global practice as it is locally. The lessons learned in South Africa have broader implications for international practitioners, and the authors stress the potential inherent in psychoanalytic theory and technique to tackle the complex problems faced in all places and settings characterised by increasing globalisation and dislocation.
The book is structured in three main sections. The first introduces contemporary issues about race, identity, disavowal and otherness viewed within an intersubejctive theoretical frame. The second section deals broadly with psychodynamic perspectives in trauma, the impact of violence on attachment, family function and individual survival, and the psychotherapeutic dilemmas these conditions raise for psychodynamically orientated therapists. The third section deals with a range of highly relevant social issues, including the complex relationship between psychoanalysis and traditional healing, the politics and psychodynamics of gendered violence, the challenge of running psychodynamic group therapy community projects with South African AIDS orphans, the intergenerational and psychodynamic processes in the proliferation of serial murder in post-apartheid South Africa and the psychodynamic potential for reparative therapy in contemporary South Africa.
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy in South Africa is aimed at local and international practitioners and students, while non-specialist readers will find the text informative and accessible.
Introduction Cora Smith
SECTION I SUBJECTIVITY AND IDENTITY
Chapter 1. Naming and otherness: South African intersubjective psychoanalytic psychotherapy and the negotiation of racialised histories Sally Swartz
Chapter 2. Raising the colour bar: Exploring issues of race, racism and racialised identities in the South African therapeutic context Yvette Esprey
Chapter 3. Subjectivity and identity in South Africa today Glenys Lobban
SECTION II TRAUMATIC STRESS
Chapter 4. Psychotherapy and disrupted attachment in the aftermath Cora Smith
Chapter 5. Traumatic stress, internal and external: What do psychodynamic perspectives have to contribute? Gill Eagle
SECTION III SOCIAL ISSUES
Chapter 6. Unconscious meaning and magic: Comparing psychoanalysis and African indigenous healing Gavin Ivey
Chapter 7. Intimate partner violence in post-apartheid South Africa: Psychoanalytic insights and dilemmas Tina Sideris
Chapter 8. Serial murder and psychoanalysis in South Africa: Teasing out contextual issues amid intrapsychic phenomena in two case studies Giada Del Fabbro
Chapter 9. Some psychoanalytic refl ections on a project working with HIV orphans and their caregivers Vanessa Hemp
Chapter 10. Reclaiming genealogy, memory and history: The psychodynamic potential for reparative therapy in contemporary South Africa Michael O’Loughlin
Afterword Glenys Lobban and Michael O’Loughlin
EDITORS:
Cora Smith is an Adjunct Professor in
the Division of Psychiatry, Department of Neurosciences, School of Clinical Medicine and Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She is also the Chief Clinical Psychologist of the Child, Adolescent and Family Unit at the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital.
Glenys Lobban is in full time private practice in New York City. She is a graduate of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and an Adjunct Clinical Supervisor, Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program, City University of New York.
Michael O’Loughlin is Professor in the School of Education and in Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University, New York where he is also on the faculty of the Postgraduate Programs in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy.
“This refreshing and interesting book opened up a space for me to ponder the legacy of apartheid in my therapeutic practice. It promotes self-reflexivity around the socio-historical context of both therapist and patient.(…) It brings forward a new kind of social articulation of psychoanalytic theory and practice that is relevant to this country’s unique problems. It is a relevant book which would prove a useful addition to any bookshelf. It would also be invaluable as a core text for post-graduate students of psychology.”
Sharon Auld in PINS, 2015, 48, 121 – 124,
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy in South Africa will touch its readers and challenge them to think and feel beneath the surface of South African life. It is a must-read for anyone concerned with individual and social change in the South African context. —Carol Long, Associate Professor & Clinical Psychologist, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
In a world struggling to face and embrace the otherness that marks our common humanity, South African experience invites us to recognize and come to grips with trauma and with the universal struggle for recognition and meaning so essential to healthy living.
—Marilyn Charles, ABPP The Austen Riggs Centre, Co-Chair, The Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, Training Analyst, Michigan Psychoanalytic Council and Chicago Centre for Psychoanalysis
