Seduction, Surrender, and Transformation: Emotional Engagement in the Analytic Process

by Karen J. Maroda

Seduction, Surrender, and Transformation demonstrates how interpersonal psychoanalysis obliges analysts to engage their patients with genuine emotional responsiveness, so that not only the patient but the analyst too is open to ongoing transformation through the analytic experience. In so doing, the analyst moves from the position of an "interpreting observer" to that of an "active participant and facilitator" whose affective communications enable the patient to acquire basic self-trust along with self-knowledge. Drawing on the current literature on affect, Maroda argues that psychological change occurs through affect-laden interpersonal processes. Given that most patients in psychotherapy have problems with affect management, the completing of cycles of affective communication between therapist and patient becomes a vitally important aspect of the therapeutic enterprise. Through emotionally open responses to their patients and careful use of patient-prompted self-disclosures, analysts can facilitate affect regulation responsibly and constructively, with the emphasis always remaining on the patients' experience.

Moments of mutual surrender - the honest emotional giving over of patient to analyst and analyst to patient - epitomize the emotionally intense interpersonal experiences that lead to enduring intrapsychic change. Maroda's work is profoundly personal. She does not hesitate to share with the reader how her own personality affects her thinking and her work. Indeed, she believes her theoretical and clinical preferences are emblematic of the way in which the analyst's subjectivity necessarily shapes theory choice and practice preferences in general. Seduction, Surrender, and Transfomation is not only a powerful brief for emotional honesty in the analytic relationship but also a model of the personal openness that, according to Maroda, psychoanalysis demands of all its practitioners.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Psychoanalysis, Emotion

216 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1999

Reviews

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Invaluable as a go-to resource and a wonderful reader on the process of psychotherapy. So many insights and cross references to a variety of sacred cows, traditional wisdom and default assumptions while examining data and formulating new approaches and questioning even those.

[Sunday · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know you are reading a quality book when you go searching for other titles by the same author; or further still you go searching for professional development workshops by the author.
The other sign of a good book on my shelf is the number of turned over corners and underlinings throughout the text; every second page in my copy!

Maroda's book is so honest, so enlightening and so comprehensive that I intend to read it a second time and maybe again after that; there are so many gems to take in.

If you are a psychiatrist, psychologist or psychoanalyst who wants to be a better therapist (as if there is even such a thing as a therapist who does not want to be a better therapist!) then this book is for you.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fascinating journey into the world of psychoanalysis and its transformational properties

[Bryan Nixon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love Maroda's work!