The Silent Past and the Invisible Present: Memory, Trauma, and Representation in Psychotherapy (Relational Perspectives Book Series) - Hardcover

Renn, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415898587 ISBN 13: 9780415898584

Publisher: Routledge, 2012

Synopsis

Drawing on research in the fields of cognitive and developmental psychology, attachment, trauma, and neuroscience, as well as 20 years in forensic and private practice, Paul Renn deftly illustrates the ways in which this research may be used to inform an integrated empirical/hermeneutic model of clinical practice. He suggests that silent, invisible processes derived from the past maintain non-optimal ways of experiencing and relating in the present, and that a neuroscience understanding of the dynamic nature of memories, and of the way in which the implicit and explicit memory systems operate and interact, is salient to a concomitant understanding of trauma, personality development, and therapeutic action. Specifically, Renn argues that an intersubjective psychodynamic model can use the power of an emotionally meaningful therapeutic relationship to gradually facilitate both relational and neurological changes in patients with trauma histories. Taken as a whole, these themes reflect a paradigmatic shift in psychoanalytic thinking about clinical work and the process of change.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Renn is a UKCP accredited psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in London and a lecturer on the Kids Company training course. He trained at the Centre for Attachment-based Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. He has a background in the National Probation Service in London, developing a particular interest in working with violent men and couples from an attachment theory and research perspective. He has presented papers at international conferences, devised and facilitated workshops on attachment and trauma and violent attachments, and had articles published in professional journals and books in the UK and abroad. He is on the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Inquiry.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0415898587
• ISBN 13: 9780415898584
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256