A phenomenological-contextualist perspective in psychoanalysis

a conversation with Robert D. Stolorow

Robert Stolorow

pp. 117-145

in: Heather Macdonald, David Goodman, Brian Becker (eds), Dialogues at the edge of American psychological discourse, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

Robert D. Stolorow describes his realization that Heidegger's existential philosophy provides invaluable philosophical tools for grounding a psychoanalytic phenomenological contextualism and for grasping the existential significance of emotional trauma. In particular, he cites Heidegger's analysis of anxiety and being-toward-death as containing crucial insights into the understanding of trauma. Stolorow's work at the boundaries of psychology and philosophy led to his ideas on the psychotherapeutic encounter as a form of applied philosophy and phenomenology. In a number of books and articles, he describes the therapeutic encounter as fluidly co-constituted by the experiential worlds of the patient and the therapist, with multiple dimensions of their experience oscillating between the background and foreground for each participant within the intersubjective field.

Cited authors

Heidegger Martin