Emotional Understanding ― Studies in Psychoanalytic Epistemology

With a unique blend of clinical compassion and philosophical reflection, Donna M. Orange explores the nature and process of psychoanalytic understanding within the intimate and healing context of treatment. Disputing the traditional psychoanalytic emphasis on verbalization, Orange highlights the [i]emotional[/i] nature of psychoanalytic understanding. Because much of emotional understanding is tacit understanding, it requires the analyst's empathic participation in the patient's emotional predicament, and attention to the kinds of memories that precede and extend beyond words. Delineating the philosophical underpinnings of emotional understanding/m-/and illuminating the epistemology of the therapeutic enterprise/m-/this book is enlightening reading for all mental health professionals interested in psychodynamic theory and treatment.

Donna M. Orange, Ph.D., Psy.D., holds two doctorates: one in Philosophy from Fordham University and the other in Clinical Psychology from Yeshiva University. A faculty member of the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity and a supervisor at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University, she maintains a private practice in New Jersey.