Eric Sherman

Much has been written about the impact of gender and sexual orientation on the intersubjective field. Yet remarkably little has been written about the unique dilemmas faced by gay clinicians who treat patients of different genders and sexual orientations. Given the particularities of growing up gay in our culture, issues of secrecy, shame, alienation, difference, and internalized homophobia necessarily enter into any gay therapist's developmental history. These factors have a shaping impact on the gay analyst's sensibility, on the way he learns to listen to his patients. In Notes from the Margins, Eric Sherman courageously reveals a wide range of subjective reactions to eight different patients. In detailed clinical vignettes that highlight his thoughts, feelings, personal history, and countertransference struggles, he conveys the experiential immediacy of working as an analyst-and, more specifically, as a gay analyst. Although Sherman is not the first author to write thoughtfully about working in the countertransference, he is among the very few to portray analytic work, particularly in the working through of enactments, as an often untidy affair, marked not only by success but also by the blind spots and insecurities that contribute to failure. Notes from the Margins is not only an illuminating overview of the special challenges faced by gay and lesbian analysts, but a window to grasping the messy realities intrinsic to the psychotherapeutic process.

The Gay Analyst's Subjectivity in the Treatment Setting

Notes from the Margins

Frances Sommer Anderson

Pathways to Pain Relief is based upon the pioneering work of John E. Sarno, MD, Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine, New York University School of Medicine. Dr. Sarno has advanced the idea that a wide variety of pain disorders are psychophysiologic in origin. Psychophysiologic disorders, previously referred to as psychosomatic disorders, are just one aspect of the recently energized field of mindbody medicine.What distinguishes Pathways to Pain Relief is that it embraces the position that musculoskeletal pain and other psychophysiologic disorders can originate from psychological experiences as a means to protect an individual from unbearable emotional distress.Psychotherapeutic techniques based on the medicalization of musculoskeletal pain foreclose the possibility of approaching these conditions as a psychophysiologic disorder. The medicalization paradigm prevents many clinicians from recognizing that the same emotional conflicts which lead to psychological symptoms can initiate the development of physical symptoms as well. Pathways to Pain Relief provides details on how treatment has worked from the patient's and the therapist's point of view.The authors, Dr. Frances Sommer Anderson & Dr. Eric Sherman, present clinical case material to illustrate how musculoskeletal pain and other psychophysiologic disorders can originate from psychological experiences as a means to protect an individual from unbearable emotional distress.

Eric Sherman

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