Hidden Faults: Recognizing and Resolving Therapeutic Disjunctions [Hardcover]

Steven A. Frankel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2000

Disjunctions. The spectrum of breaches in therapy, from subtle to devastating, when therapist and patient miss and confound each other. Disjunctions may briefly confuse the therapeutic partners, grind the therapy to a temporary halt, or lead to premature termination. Always, they provide inestimable opportunities for therapist and patient to understand each other and bring their work to ever more profound levels.

Hidden Faults explores disjunctions and their place in resolving stalemate and furthering therapeutic progress. Disjunction is a concept that can be used with any psychodynamic system supporting a two-person view of therapy, where the inner life of both participants is available for inquiry and change. Little of significance will happen in therapy if the therapist is not willing to be fundamentally influenced by the patient, since transformation in the therapist is the most powerful sign to the patient of being taken seriously. Dr. Steven Frankel illustrates this central point using extensive case material, showing therapist and patient in their human, often agonizing, struggles to bring about creative change.

The author calls his picture of the mind the self and object unit model. The major activities in working within this structure are recognizing the multiple relational configurations each partner brings to the therapy field, and identifying and resolving the inevitable disjunctions that interfere with therapeutic movement. In contrast to traditional models where the patient's wisdom may be minimized, Dr. Frankel holds that heartfelt initiation from each partner in recognizing and healing failures in rapport leads to developmental momentum and lasting creative change.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Dr. Frankel has written a book of enormous usefulness to psychotherapists. Its message resonates long after one has finished reading it -- Alicia F. Lieberman, Ph.D., March 2000

Hidden Faults is a brave and wise book. Frankel's absolute honesty...make a compelling and persuasive read." -- Nancy D. Chodorow, Ph.D, March 2000

Such openness to new possibilities is a rare event in the history of psychoanalysis... -- Thomas H. Ogden, M.D., March 2000

The timeliness, originality, and importance of Hidden Faults lie in Steven Frankel's highly readable integration of the personal and interpersonal... -- Donnel Stern, Ph.D., March 2000

From the Author

Psychotherapeutic consensus; an achievement requiring the openness and heartfelt commitment for patient and therapist to join:

In my books Hidden Faults: Recognizing and Resolving Therapeutic Disjunctions and Intricate Engagements: the Collaborative Basis of Therapeutic Change, I ask how patient and therapist manage to agree about what they see and do together. How do they keep a thoroughly open mind, repeatedly experiencing surprise, enabling them to find in the other a psychotherapy partner unlike anyone they had imagined; then communicating their findings to each other? What depth of feeling and how much self revelation are required to make each want to hear what the other has found? And when and why do the partners in psychotherapy change?

In my work I explore:

-- The ingredients leading to constructive psychotherapeutic change.

-- The bilateral character of that change, the therapist especially struggling to understand the patient.

-- The dynamic nature of the psychotherapy process in terms of disjunctions - subtle blocks forcing the two not to recognize each other, and conjunctions - the connections that are forged when these are overcome.

-- The complexity of the psychotherapy interaction, its multiple components, active internally and between each partner at every moment; discovering the verbal and powerful nonverbal ways psychotherapy and psychoanalysis work.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 212 pages
• Publisher: Psychosocial Press (January 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1887841377
• ISBN-13: 978-1887841375
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,115,476 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Therapist Is Alive, December 10, 2000

By 

Dr. Paul Gilbert (Mill Valley, Ca USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hidden Faults: Recognizing and Resolving Therapeutic Disjunctions (Hardcover)

In contrast to the depiction of therapy in the classical psychoanalytic mode, Dr. Frankel's therapies are both alive and passionate. The detailed reports illustrate Dr. Frankel's role in confronting his own mistakes and working collaboratively with his patients to set things right. The concept of disjunctions is readily accessible to anyone who has ever been in therapy and is certainly a daily experience for seasoned psychotherpists. What Dr. Frankel carefully describes is a technique of working with the patient, of admitting one's mistakes as a therapist, and developing greater intimacy with the patient. Child therapists will be particularly receptive to his emphasis upon the extension of development throughout the life cycle. Family therapists will find this a useful extension of interpersonal systems theories into work with individual patients. Adult therapists of many theoretical persuasions will find this book an invaluable resource in negociating the choppy waters of resistance and countertransference impasses. Of greatest importance, Hidden Faults will free therapists to be more honest with themselves and their patients to the benefit of both.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Only For Therapists, February 7, 2001

By 

Melvin M. Stowsky (Northridge, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hidden Faults: Recognizing and Resolving Therapeutic Disjunctions (Hardcover)

Hidden Faults is a book that commands the attention not only of therapists but anyone who in working in any one of the helping professions. As a retired teacher, school counselor and principal I found Dr. Frankel's discussion of disjunctions right on the mark. Dr. Frankel continues to explore the concept of the self and other unit (SO) which he developed in his book Intricate Engagements, but this time the emphasis is on the disjunctions that may occur between the two. He uses his case experiences to illustrate the ways in which therapist and patient, whether consciously or unconsciously, may misinterpret one another. Dr. Frankel's self-criticism is often brutally frank. The honesty with which he probes his own failure to recognize what his patients are trying to tell him speaks to his professional integrity and his ongoing quest to make his work reap positive results. The writing is lucid and sharp, often engaging the reader in such manner that he becomes a third party to the therapy session. Educators could learn much from Dr. Frankel's work. As a result of reading Hidden Faults I began thinking about my own career. I believe that on those occasions when I felt I wasn't "getting through" to students, I was hearing but not listening to what they were telling me. Instead of trying to learn and understand what they saw as their problems, I was often quick to diagnose and suggest alternative of behavior that would more nearly conform to my agenda and the school's. I wanted to change them, but in no way were they going to change me. It seems to me that the inability to recognize disjunctions that occur within adult-student relationships in school is one of the prime reasons professionals are unable to get a handle on many of the problems facing schools today. Although primarily a book for practicing therapists, Hidden Faults, by extension, makes the case for understanding and resolving the disjunctions in all human relationships.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A View of Disjunctions from a Woman Psychiatrist, December 10, 2000

By 

Dr. Paul Gilbert (Mill Valley, Ca USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hidden Faults: Recognizing and Resolving Therapeutic Disjunctions (Hardcover)

I have found the concept of disjunctions very useful in my clinical work with patients. It has been true for many years that in my own practice I have found an active, relational perspective very useful. In Hidden Faults, Dr. Steven Frankel organizes the ways in which honest communication about errors can be conveyed to patients. In my work as a woman therapist working often with women as patients, I have found the movement away from the authoritarian male model of therapy crucial. Many of my patients have had unsuccessful prior therapies with aloof and self-justifying therapist whose errors go unrecognized. Surely Dr. Frankel's approach is more humane and enlightened. Patients and therapist alike would benefit from a careful reading of Dr. Frankel's clinical examples.