Insightful, compassionate and accessible | Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy and Its Dilemmas

Beautifully written and sensitive | Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy and Its Dilemmas | Deborah Luepnitz, Deborah Anna Luepnitz

books:


	• Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy and Its Dilemmas Deborah Luepnitz, Deborah Anna Luepnitz Basic Books, 2003 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

A playful and moving book

In this book, the author moves deftly between playfulness and seriousness, commentary and case content, case theory and compassion. For a psychodynamic therapist, Luepnitz is unusually self-revealing, without in any way allowing her own presence to preempt the central role of her patients in their own dramas.

The book made me think about Lacan some more, which was something of a surprise as he is a thinker whose work I tend to dismiss out of hand. It also helped me think about the practice of psychotherapy and the ways in which sticking to received wisdom -- as patient or therapist -- can lead to a central deadness in the work. No such danger appears to attend Luepnitz' work as presented here, and it strikes me that she must be a damn good therapist.

for more information click here

Insightful, compassionate and accessible

With great grace and empathy, Luepnitz traces five divergent routes through the sometimes difficult process of analysis. Luepnitz' considerable training and erudition illuminate not just psychoanalytic history and theory, but the relationships of patients and their families as they evolve through analysis. The stories of her patients' progress are as richly rewarding in analytic terms as any found in Freud or Lacan, but told with more humor and consideration for the reader. (In that respect, I suspect Luepnitz has implictly situated the reader as a necessary and welcome participant in the book and the analytic process she describes--as being in another kind of relationship with the analyst/writer and patient/subject). Perhaps most impressive is Luepnitz' ability to challenge and engage those familiar with psychotherapy, while remaining accessible and rewarding to newcomers. As her wonderful chapter titles suggest ("A Darwinian Finch," "Don Juan in Trenton") Luepnitz is especially adept, aesthetically and analytically, at translating the paradoxes of the unconscious, and showing how analysis can help us understand our possibilities as well as our limitations. Her reflections on the analyst's political and social role in contemporary society are also compelling and refreshing.

for more information click here

Beautifully written and sensitive

A beautifully written book - Luepnitz comes across as intelligent and educated, and genuinely sensitive and caring. Not at all preachy. An unusually delightful read.

for more information click here

The space between isolation and entanglement

Through five captivating patient narratives, psychologist Deborah Luepnitz amazingly captures the essence of the human struggle of finding balance between the self and the other. Each chapter paints a version of the push-pull relationship between our simultaneous needs for independence and connection. This universal dilemma of intimacy is nicely portrayed with the ongoing metaphor of a troop of porcupines huddling to stay warm on a cold winter's day: they strive to be close enough to stay warm, but not so close that they poke each other. Deborah's book explores how the answer to this core dilemma of intimacy may very well rest on our ability to create a balanced life that allows us "to chose solitude freely [and] to love and engage fully."

for more information click here

A great value for a psychotherapist

Not only this book has great examples of today's psychotherapy practice and dilemma's, it has a high literary value. It offers an easy and exciting read. The author seems to be passionate about her profession and has a lot to offer colleagues and students without the famous "psychoanalytic snobism." It also offers an insightful view of how intimacy problems look today and how to deal with them in our narcissistic society. The book is beneficial for both students and professionals.

Each generation of therapists can boast of only a few writers like Deborah Luepnitz, whose sympathy and wit shine through a fine, luminous prose. In Schopenhauer's Porcupines she recounts five true stories from her practice, stories of patients who range from the super-rich to the homeless and who grapple with panic attacks, psychosomatic illness, marital despair, and sexual recklessness. Intimate, original, and triumphantly funny, Schopenhauer's Porcupines goes further than any other book in unveiling the secrets of "how talking helps."

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2

hot