Ebook: When Hurt Remains: Relational Perspectives on Therapeutic Failure

In this book the editors have solicited the unique and unmediated voices of fifteen leading psychotherapists, who share intimate and revealing stories from their clinic, professional incidents that shook the therapeutic bond and left a scar in both parties. The contributors courageously agreed to revisit the cases that still burn inside of them, attempting to conceptualize these and give them words, and to demonstrate the mutual vulnerability inherent within the psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic endeavor.

While failure is recognized as developmentally necessary and a cornerstone in the formation and maintenance of attachment relationships, stories of therapeutic failures are seldom told in our profession. Can we fully recognize our failures without shaming ourselves and others? Can we bare it while attending to our narcissistic wounds and rescue fantasy? This book addresses all of these concerns, while examining what relational theory and practice has to contribute to the understanding of, and working with, therapeutic failure.