This book is a distinctive collection of essays on the theory and methods of a developmentally-based, relationally-focused integrative psychotherapy. In an easy-to-read style, Richard Erskine elaborates on a relationally-focused psychotherapy for acute and cumulative neglect, dissociation, alcoholism, obsession, prolonged grief, as well as psychotherapy with couples. Detailed examples of actual psychotherapy sessions illustrate the therapeutic methods of both phenomenological and developmental inquiry as well as the significance of the psychotherapist's interpersonal involvement through acknowledgment, validation, normalization, and presence. Each chapter takes the reader into further depths of understanding the complexities of an in-depth psychotherapy. Erskine writes from the heart while drawing from over fifty years as a psychotherapist, supervisor, and trainer. Essays on Integrative Psychotherapy vividly illustrates the interpsychic struggle of clients who engage in the schizoid process of relational withdrawal and live in loneliness, and will be essential reading for psychotherapists and psychoanalysts in practice and in training.
