Structures of Subjectivity ─ Explorations in Psychoanalytic Phenomenology and Contextualism

Structures of Subjectivity: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Phenomenology and Contextualism, is a revised and expanded second edition of a work first published in 1984, which was the first systematic presentation of the intersubjective viewpoint – what George Atwood and Robert Stolorow called psychoanalytic phenomenology – in psychoanalysis. This edition contains new chapters tracing the further development of their thinking over the ensuing decades and explores the personal origins of their most essential ideas.

In this new edition, Atwood and Stolorow cover the philosophical and theoretical assumptions of psychoanalysis and present a broad approach that they have designated phenomenological contextualism. This approach addresses personal subjective worlds in all their richness and idiosyncrasy and focuses on their relational contexts of origin and therapeutic transformation.

Structures of Subjectivity covers the principles guiding the practice of psychoanalytic therapy from the authors' viewpoints and includes numerous detailed clinical case studies. The book will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, practitioners of psychotherapy, psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, and social workers. It will also be of interest to scholars and students with an interest in psychoanalytic theory and practice, and its philosophical premises.

George E. Atwood is Professor of Clinical Psychology (Emeritus), Rutgers University, USA, and Founding Faculty Member, Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, New York. He is author of The Abyss of Madness(Routledge, 2011), and coauthor of Psychoanalytic Treatment (Analytic Press, 1987), Contexts of Being (Analytic Press, 1992), Faces in a Cloud (Jason Aronson, 1993), and Working Intersubjectively (Analytic Press, 1997).

Robert D. Stolorow is a Founding Faculty Member, Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles, and Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, New York. He is author of World, Affectivity, Trauma: Heidegger and Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2011) and Trauma and Human Existence: Autobiographical, Psychoanalytic, and Philosophical Reflections (Routledge, 2007), and coauthor of five other books with George Atwood.