The Search for a Relational Home ― An Intersubjective View of Therapeutic Action

In The Search for a Relational Home, Chris Jaenicke gives the reader an inside view of what actually happens in psychotherapy and how change occurs. He describes how both participants – the patient and the therapist – feel, and how they affect each other. The reader is encouraged to vicariously partake in the process from the perspective of his or her own life experiences.

The book describes the nature of therapeutic action through a radicalized version of intersubjective systems theory. It demonstrates how psychotherapy is an outcome of a highly personal encounter between two unique human beings, and how, while the goal of psychoanalysis is to help the patient, this can only be achieved inasmuch as both participants are willing to undergo transformation. Jaenicke clarifies how both successes and failures as well as personal strengths and weaknesses play a constitutive part in the psychotherapeutic process. The Search for a Relational Home also provides theoretical and practical guidelines for supervision.

Jaenicke presents here a unique approach to the process of psychotherapy which will be vital reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and those in training as well as students in all fields of mental health.

Chris Jaenicke is a faculty member and training and supervising analyst at the Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur Psychoanalyse und Psychotherapie, e.V. Berlin. He is in private practice in Berlin, Germany, and is the author of several previous books, including Change in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2011).