Providing the Heart for AGI Systems

“Although ostensibly a book for the family therapist, the relational systems model that Dr. Daniel Bochner has developed effects a relatively seamless integration of the interpersonal with the intrapsychic and makes this dazzlingly brilliant book a must-read for family and individual therapists alike. Bochner is eminently qualified: he has a profound understanding of, and respect for, psychoanalytic theories; extensive training in, and experience with, family systems theories; and a powerfully integrative and sophisticated mind. This unique combination has enabled him to construct a comprehensive model of therapeutic action that ingeniously synthesizes the best that one-person and two-person psychologies have to offer. Drawing upon contemporary psychoanalytic theories that conceive of the countertransference as co-created, as a story about both therapist and patient (that is, the patient's impact on the therapist), Bochner advances his belief that all therapists are continuously responding emotionally - whether wittingly or unwittingly - to their patients. These responses inform both their understanding and how they intervene. In essence, countertransference is inevitable, necessary, and even desirable, particularly in the hands of a therapist who is wise to the ways in which her own experience is ever being shaped by her patients' expectations. This is truly an extraordinary book that is at once inspired and inspiring. Bravo!”

—Martha Stark, M.D. -- Faculty, Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. Author, "Modes of Therapeutic Action: Enhancement of Knowledge, Provision of Experience, and Engagement in Relationship."

“For the past fifty years psychoanalytic psychotherapy and family therapy have developed largely as separate worlds, with most practitioners comfortably settled in one camp or another. Dr. Bochner is part of a new generation of therapists, trained in both of these traditions and committed to exploring a dialogue between them. He noticed that around 1950, at the time family therapy was poised to break away from analytic thinking, psychoanalysis began a revolutionary turn in a more relational direction. This shift, Dr. Bochner argues, occurred with the introduction of the totalistic view of countertransference as all the analyst's emotional reactions to the patient. As a result, psychoanalysis has become a different field from the one the early family therapy pioneers were escaping. In this volume Dr. Bochner explains how this broader view of the therapist's countertransference reactions informs the family therapist's use of self and contributes to a new, systemic understanding of both intrapsychic and interpersonal functioning. Family therapists have much to learn from concepts such as splitting, projective identification, and the paranoid and depressive positions, which have deepened clinical practice over the past several decades. And psychoanalytic thinkers can benefit from Dr. Bochner's original application of these ideas in creating his systemic relational model.”

—Stephen Schultz, Ph.D.  -- Author, "Family Systems Therapy: An Integration."

“Daniel Bochner's book is an ambitious integration of psychoanalysis and family systems theory. He shows that the therapist can be most effective in this system when she enters as a full participant, and that this occurs principally and most effectively through her use of countertransference. A special asset of this book is the careful explication of the position of major contributors on the use of the therapist's self. This book is a much-needed addition to the literature on the use of self in family therapy. It is an inventive, scholarly, clear, and beautifully constructed invitation to therapists to thoughtfully use the whole of their experience in the therapeutic encounter.”

—David E. Scharff, M.D. -- Co-Director of the International Institute of Object Relations Therapy and co-author of "Object Relations Family Therapy."

“This is a comprehensive and creative treatment of countertransference, an important but neglected topic in family therapy. It is also a significant advance in the movement to integrate psychoanalytic thinking into family therapy.”

—Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D. -- Faculty, Family Institute at Northwestern University. Co-author, "Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods; author of Internal Family Systems Therapy.