Table Of Content“The Unobtrusive Relational Analyst draws on the history of psychoanalysis
so as to create its bright future. In its pages the contributions of Freud
and British Object Relations theory open to the Relational Turn and to a
model of 21st century practice that is integrative and innovative. Through
multiple, extended vignettes Grossmark illustrates his clinical position of
gentle presence with a remarkable openness and clarity, emphasizing the
role of action in the talking cure and the importance of engagement in
a process that takes patient and analyst, and will also take the reader,
to undiscovered areas of psychic life and living. If this sounds different
and new to you, you’re right, it is! Transcending parochial divisions,
Grossmark creates from varied facets of analytic theory an elegant and
eloquent original synthesis that is at once ‘in the tradition’ and its forward
edge.”
—Bruce Reis, Ph.D., NYU Postdoctoral Program
in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, & the Institute
for Psychoanalytic Training and Research
“In this wonderfully innovative book, Robert Grossmark shows us how
to work with the most difficult patients we encounter, those whose words
are empty, whose feelings are dead and who are unable to relate as whole
objects or to make a life they can own. Calling on a wide variety of theories
from many different schools of thought, Grossmark has woven a conceptual
net that captures his unique way of ‘companioning’ these people whom he
describes in such loving and dramatic detail. A companion is someone
who travels along with you and shares your bread. I can think of no better
companion for a deep psychoanalytic voyage than Robert Grossmark. This
book should be a must read for anyone who works with these challenging
patients.”
—Sheldon Bach, Ph.D., Adjunct Clinical Professor of
Psychology, New York University Postdoctoral
Program in Psychoanalysis; Fellow, International
Psychoanalytical Association
“Grossmark’s original formulations about the therapeutic presence
required of the analyst who meets primitive unformulated and unspeakable
self states in his patients, reverberate in the consulting room long after
reading. His clinical work is moving in its great receptivity, and inspiring
freedom from the conventions of psychoanalytic technique of whatever
school. For me, it courageously illustrates the radical attitude required of
an analyst who truly leans on Bion’s act of faith and on Winnicott’s ‘living
an experience together.’”
—Michal Rieck, Training and Supervising Analyst, the
Israel Psychoanalytic Society; Co-Founder and
Co-Director, The Israel Winnicott Center, Tel Aviv
“Robert Grossmark has written a fearlessly creative, profoundly
important, and deeply moving account of the work of the ‘unobtrusive
relational analyst.’ Many patients, he notes, are not helped by analysts
who hang back until the proper interpretive moment. But many of those
same patients don’t profit from the analyst’s more active engagement in
the clinical relatedness, either. Grossmark finds his answer in therapeutic
‘companioning,’ an acceptance of the ‘flow of enactments’ that involves
the analyst’s unobtrusive yet deeply involved emotional presence.
Grossmark’s illustrations are always gripping, often downright thrilling.
He is a brilliant clinical writer. Don’t miss this book.”
—Donnel B. Stern, Training and Supervising Analyst
at the William Alanson White Institute; Adjunct Clinical
Professor of Psychology, New York University Postdoctoral
Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis
The Unobtrusive
Relational Analyst
Psychoanalysts increasingly find themselves working with patients and states that
are not amenable to verbal and dialogic engagement. Such patients are challenging
for a psychoanalytic approach that assumes that the patient relates in the verbal
realm and is capable of reflective function. Both the classical stance of neutrality
and abstinence and a contemporary relational approach that works with mutuality
and intersubjectivity can often ask too much of patients.
The Unobtrusive Relational Analyst introduces a new psychoanalytic register
for working with such patients and states, involving a present and engaged analyst
who is unobtrusive to the unfolding of the patient’s inner world and the flow of
mutual enactments. For the unobtrusive relational analyst, the world and idiom of
the patient becomes the defining signature of the clinical interaction and process.
Rather than seeking to bring patients into greater dialogic relatedness, the analyst
companions the patient in the flow of enactive engagement and into the damaged
and constrained landscapes of their inner worlds. Being known and companioned
in these areas of deep pain, shame and fragmentation is the foundation on which
psychoanalytic transformation and healing rests.
In a series of illuminating chapters that include vivid examples drawn from
his work with individuals and with groups, Robert Grossmark illustrates the
work of the unobtrusive relational analyst. He reconfigures the role of action and
enactment in psychoanalysis and group analysis, and expands the understanding
of the analyst’s subjectivity to embrace receptivity, surrender and companioning.
Offering fresh concepts regarding therapeutic action and psychoanalytic
engagement, The Unobtrusive Relational Analyst will be of great interest to all
psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists.
Robert Grossmark is a psychoanalyst working with individuals, couples and
groups in New York City. He is Adjunct Clinical Professor and Consultant at the
New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy.
He teaches at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies; the Clinical
Psychology Doctoral Program at the City College of New York and the Eastern
Group Psychotherapy Society.
The Unobtrusive
Relational Analyst
Explorations in Psychoanalytic
Companioning
Robert Grossmark
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2018 Robert Grossmark
The right of Robert Grossmark to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Grossmark, Robert, author.
Title: The unobtrusive relational analyst : explorations in
psychoanalytic companioning / Robert Grossmark.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2018. |
Series: Relational perspectives book series ; v. 101 | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017056381 (print) | LCCN 2017057233
(ebook) | ISBN 9781315708096 (Master) | ISBN 9781317481829
(Web PDF) | ISBN 9781317481812 (ePub) | ISBN
9781317481805 (Mobipocket/Kindle) | ISBN 9781138899056
(hbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781138899063 (pbk. : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781315708096 (ebk)
Subjects: | MESH: Psychoanalytic Therapy | Psychotherapeutic
Processes | Professional-Patient Relations | Empathy | Trust
Classification: LCC RC480.5 (ebook) | LCC RC480.5 (print) |
NLM WM 460.6 | DDC 616.89/14—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017056381
ISBN: 978-1-138-89905-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-89906-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-70809-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For Carina, Tomas and Sophia
Contents
Prologue xi
Acknowledgements xvi
Introduction 1
PART I
Psychoanalytic process 11
1 The unobtrusive relational analyst 13
2 The flow of enactive engagement 40
3 Psychoanalytic companioning 54
4 The eloquence of action: unobtrusive psychoanalytic
companioning and the growth of mind and self 76
5 Enactment: the total situation 86
6 Everything happens at once: the emergence of symmetric
enactment 106
7 The work of the narrative and enactive co-narration 125
Description:Psychoanalysts increasingly find themselves working with patients and states that are not amenable to verbal and dialogic engagement. Such patients are challenging for a psychoanalytic approach that assumes that the patient relates in the verbal realm and is capable of reflective function. Both the
