Practicing Intersubjectively

By (author) Peter Buirski Contributions by Donna Orange

Publication date:

16 June 2005

Length of book:

176 pages

Publisher

Jason Aronson, Inc.

ISBN-13: 9780765703828

Practicing Intersubjectively describes how the intersubjective systems perspective informs, shapes and guides the psychotherapeutic process. Using extensive clinical case material, Buirski illustrates the way an intersubjective systems sensibility informs and enriches clinical practice. The intersubjective systems perspective views each treatment as exquisitely context sensitive. This means that the person who comes for therapy would present differently to different therapists and the two of them would construct different processes. Therapists themselves are not interchangeable, and the intersubjective field that the two participants create together would be quite different from the field created by any other pair. Practicing Intersubjectively, with the focus on attuning and articulating to the contextual construction of personal worlds of experience enables a different therapy process to unfold than occurs in traditional 1-person, authority based treatment approaches and is uniquely suited to working with people from diverse cultural backgrounds and those suffering from such challenging concerns as trauma and prejudice.
Buirski rightly places Practicing Intersubjectively in the theoretical tradition established by Stolorow et al., with their emphasis on understanding development and treatment in terms of the interaction and mutual influence amongst the involved subjectivities. This book represents a rich application of the intersubjective systems perspective to a wide range of clinical situations, helping to ground clinicians who may find some of the intersubjectivity literature too abstract or philosophical.