Despite the importance of the concept of hope in human affairs,
psychoanalysts have long had difficulty accepting responsibility
for the manner in which their various interpretive orientations and
explanations of therapeutic action express their own hopes for
their patients. In Objects of Hope: Exploring Possibility and Limit
in Psychoanalysis, Steven Cooper remedies this longstanding lacuna
in the literature, and, in the process, provides a thorough
comparative analysis of contemporary psychoanalytic models with
respect to issues of hope and hopefulness.
Cooper's task is challenging, given that the most hopeful aspects
of human growth frequently entail acceptance of the destructive
elements of our inner lives. The analysis of hope, then, implicates
what Cooper sees as a central dialectic tension in psychoanalysis:
that between psychic possibility and psychic limit. He argues that
analysts have historically had difficulty integrating the concept
of limit into a treatment modality so dedicated to the creation and
augmentation of psychic possibility. And yet, it is only by
accepting the realm of limit as a necessary counterpoise to the
realm of possibility and clinically embracing the tension between
the two realms that analysts can further their understanding of
therapeutic process in the interest of better treatment
outcomes.
Cooper persuasively demonstrates how each psychoanalytic theory
provides its own logic of hope; this logic, in turn, translates
into a distinctive sense of what the analyst may hope for the
patient, and what the patient is encouraged to hope for himself or
herself. Objects of Hope brings ranging scholarship and refreshing
candor to bear on the knotty issue of what can and cannot be
achieved in the course of psychoanalytic therapy. It will be valued
not only as an exemplary exercise in comparative psychoanalysis,
but also as a thoughtful, original effort to place the vital issue
of hope at the center of clinical concern.
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