While the psychodynamic understanding of play and play's therapeutic potential was long restricted to the realm of children, Winnicott's work demonstrated the profound significance of the capacity to play for healthy mental functioning during adult life. Scattered writings of Erikson, Glenn, and Shopper notwithstanding, the early spark of understanding remained largely ill developed. In Play and Playfulness, the reader is offered an exciting and highly informative set of essays about the psychic area that lies between reality and unreality and between veracity and imagination. It is the area of paradox and creativity. It sustains the self, allows for ego-replenishing regressions, and adds to the joy of the vital and lived experience. This book provides an easy and readable passage to the valley of the transitional experience in which creative synthesis of reality and unreality leads to a world of vigor, enthusiasm, and liveliness. The cultural variations and the clinical implications of such an experience are thoroughly elucidated. The result is a volume replete with technical virtuosity, clinical relevance, and the basic and nearly self evident humane music of the day-to-day experience of life.

When the late Heinz Kohut defined psychoanalysis as the science of empathy and introspection, he sparked a debate that has animated psychoanalytic discourse ever since. What is the relationship of empathy to psychoanalysis? Is it a constituent of analytical technique, an integral aspect of the therapeutic action of analysis, or simply a metaphor for a mode of observation better understood via 'classical' theory and terminology? The dialogue about empathy, which is really a dialogue about the nature of the analytic process, continues in this two-volume set, originally published in 1984. In Volume I, several illuminating attempts to define empathy are followed by Kohut's essay, 'Introspection, Empathy, and the Semicircle of Mental Health.' Kohut's paper, in turn, ushers in a series of original contributions on 'Empathy as a Perspective in Psychoanalysis.' The volume ends with five papers which strive to demarcate an empathic approach to various areas of artistic endeavour, including the appreciation of visual art. Volume II continues the dialogue with a series of developmental studies which explore the role of empathy in early child care at the same time as they chart the emergence of the young child's capacity to empathize. In the concluding section, 'Empathy in Psychoanalytic Work,' contributors and discussants return to the arena of technique. They not only theorize about empathy in relation to analytic understanding and communication, but address issues of nosology, considering how the empathic vantage point may be utilized in the treatment of patients with borderline and schizophrenic pathology. In their critical attention to the many dimensions of empathy - philosophical, developmental, therapeutic, artistic - the contributors collectively bear witness to the fact that Kohut has helped to shape new questions, but not set limits to the search for answers. The product of their efforts is an anatomical exploration of a topic whose relevance for psychoanalysis and psychotherapy is only beginning to be understood.

When the late Heinz Kohut defined psychoanalysis as the science of empathy and introspection, he sparked a debate that has animated psychoanalytic discourse ever since. What is the relationship of empathy to psychoanalysis? Is it a constituent of analytical technique, an integral aspect of the therapeutic action of analysis, or simply a metaphor for a mode of observation better understood via 'classical' theory and terminology? The dialogue about empathy, which is really a dialogue about the nature of the analytic process, continues in this two-volume set, originally published in 1984. In Volume I, several illuminating attempts to define empathy are followed by Kohut's essay, 'Introspection, Empathy, and the Semicircle of Mental Health.' Kohut's paper, in turn, ushers in a series of original contributions on 'Empathy as a Perspective in Psychoanalysis.' The volume ends with five papers which strive to demarcate an empathic approach to various areas of artistic endeavour, including the appreciation of visual art. Volume II continues the dialogue with a series of developmental studies which explore the role of empathy in early child care at the same time as they chart the emergence of the young child's capacity to empathize. In the concluding section, 'Empathy in Psychoanalytic Work,' contributors and discussants return to the arena of technique. They not only theorize about empathy in relation to analytic understanding and communication, but address issues of nosology, considering how the empathic vantage point may be utilized in the treatment of patients with borderline and schizophrenic pathology. In their critical attention to the many dimensions of empathy - philosophical, developmental, therapeutic, artistic - the contributors collectively bear witness to the fact that Kohut has helped to shape new questions, but not set limits to the search for answers. The product of their efforts is an anatomical exploration of a topic whose relevance for psychoanalysis and psychotherapy is only beginning to be understood.

When the late Heinz Kohut defined psychoanalysis as the science of empathy and introspection, he sparked a debate that has animated psychoanalytic discourse ever since. What is the relationship of empathy to psychoanalysis? Is it a constituent of analytical technique, an integral aspect of the therapeutic action of analysis, or simply a metaphor for a mode of observation better understood via 'classical' theory and terminology? The dialogue about empathy, which is really a dialogue about the nature of the analytic process, continues in this two-volume set, originally published in 1984. In Volume I, several illuminating attempts to define empathy are followed by Kohut's essay, 'Introspection, Empathy, and the Semicircle of Mental Health.' Kohut's paper, in turn, ushers in a series of original contributions on 'Empathy as a Perspective in Psychoanalysis.' The volume ends with five papers which strive to demarcate an empathic approach to various areas of artistic endeavour, including the appreciation of visual art. Volume II continues the dialogue with a series of developmental studies which explore the role of empathy in early child care at the same time as they chart the emergence of the young child's capacity to empathize. In the concluding section, 'Empathy in Psychoanalytic Work,' contributors and discussants return to the arena of technique. They not only theorize about empathy in relation to analytic understanding and communication, but address issues of nosology, considering how the empathic vantage point may be utilized in the treatment of patients with borderline and schizophrenic pathology. In their critical attention to the many dimensions of empathy - philosophical, developmental, therapeutic, artistic - the contributors collectively bear witness to the fact that Kohut has helped to shape new questions, but not set limits to the search for answers. The product of their efforts is an anatomical exploration of a topic whose relevance for psychoanalysis and psychotherapy is only beginning to be understood.

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

When the late Heinz Kohut defined psychoanalysis as the science of empathy and introspection, he sparked a debate that has animated psychoanalytic discourse ever since. What is the relationship of empathy to psychoanalysis? Is it a constituent of analytical technique, an integral aspect of the therapeutic action of analysis, or simply a metaphor for a mode of observation better understood via 'classical' theory and terminology? The dialogue about empathy, which is really a dialogue about the nature of the analytic process, continues in this two-volume set, originally published in 1984. In Volume 1, several illuminating attempts to define empathy are followed by Kohut's essay, 'Introspection, Empathy, and the Semicircle of Mental Health.' Kohut's paper, in turn, ushers in a series of original contributions on 'Empathy as a Perspective in Psychoanalysis.' The volume ends with five papers which strive to demarcate an empathic approach to various areas of artistic endeavour, including the appreciation of visual art. Volume 2 continues the dialogue with a series of developmental studies which explore the role of empathy in early child care at the same time as they chart the emergence of the young child's capacity to empathize. In the concluding section, 'Empathy in Psychoanalytic Work,' contributors and discussants return to the arena of technique. They not only theorize about empathy in relation to analytic understanding and communication, but address issues of nosology, considering how the empathic vantage point may be utilized in the treatment of patients with borderline and schizophrenic pathology. In their critical attention to the many dimensions of empathy - philosophical, developmental, therapeutic, artistic - the contributors collectively bear witness to the fact that Kohut has helped to shape new questions, but not set limits to the search for answers. The product of their efforts is an anatomical exploration of a topic whose relevance for psychoanalysis and psychotherapy is only beginning to be understood.