Toward a Psychology of Uncertainty: Trauma-centered Psychoanalysis (Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series) (Hardcover)

"How much can one have to say about the idea of uncertainty in living and in clinical practice? With each chapter of this eloquent, deeply personal and yet universally applicable book, I thought that the next chapter would have to be redundant. I was most definitely wrong. Each chapter took me on a journey – sometimes a painful one – that has enriched my own life and has added greatly to my clinical sensitivity and depth. Over and over, I found myself grateful to the author for having the emotional courage to plumb the ‘trauma-generated certitudes,’ for in so doing, I emerge from the reading a more resilient, more open-minded clinician."

- Lynne Jacobs, Ph.D., Psy.D., Training and Supervising Analyst, Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles; Co-Founder, Pacific Gestalt Institute, Los Angeles

"This is a courageous and inspiring book, both scholarly and accessible. Doris Brothers invites and challenges us to bring center-stage in psychoanalytic thinking aspects often marginalized: trauma, uncertainty, gender, faith. We begin to notice personal and institutional methods of reducing life-and-death uncertainties to simplistic and tightly-held "certitudes". These methods, including denial, authoritarianism, rigid categories, and even cult-like relations, may lead to burnout and despair. Brothers’ clinical accounts, illustrating her perspective for psychotherapists of varied theoretical persuasions, are gripping and thought-provoking. A great read."

- Donna Orange, Ph.D., Psy.D., Author, Emotional Understanding: Studies in Psychoanalytic Epistemology

"In bringing a relational systems sensibility to the ubiquitous condition of existential uncertainty, Doris Brothers has created a new and compelling language for the understanding of our traumatic worlds and their therapeutic transformation. This book is a major contribution not only to psychoanalysis but to all the healing disciplines."

- Maxwell S. Sucharov, M.D., Member, International Council for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology

Using in-depth clinical illustrations, Dr. Brothers demonstrates how a mutual desire to heal and to be healed from trauma draws patients and analysts into their analytic relationships.She recommends the reconceptualization of what has heretofore been considered transference and counter transference in terms of the transformation of experienced uncertainty. In her view the increased ability of both analytic partners to love with uncertainty is the mark of a successful treatment. Dr. Brothers' perspective sheds fresh light on a variety of topics of great general interest to analysts as well as many of their patients, such as gender, the acceptance of death, faith, cult-like training programs, and burnout. Her discussions of these topics are enlivened by references to contemporary cinema and theatre.

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