Review of Self-Relations in the Psychotherapy Process
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2006
Description
Reviews the book, Self-Relations in the Psychotherapy Process by J. Christopher Muran (see record 2000-16556-000). The self is alive and well and living in psychology, at least if the contributors to J. Christopher Muran's stimulating volume, Self-Relations in the Psychotherapy Process, are to be taken seriously. The self is a central construct in psychoanalytic, humanistic, and cognitive-behavioral theories, but nowadays even some radical behaviorists find the self to be an important concept. Thus, the present is a propitious time for a book that presents the major theoretical approaches to the self in psychotherapy and, fortunately for us, Muran, by gathering the views of leading psychodynamic, humanistic, cognitive-behavioral, and radical behavioral thinkers, has assembled a volume of almost uniformly high quality. Inspired by postmodernism, especially by the growing popularity of dialogic and perspectival epistemologies, Muran has a constructed this book as a set of six dialogues among contributors of varying theoretical persuasions, and although I doubt that dialogic and perspectival epistemologies are necessarily postmodern, I nevertheless find that this volume's dialogic structure makes for interesting reading and adds to its intellectual contributions. Because Muran's contention, with which I agree, is that the self is not an isolated entity but rather part of a relational matrix, it is perhaps necessary for this book to be structured dialogically. Whether postmodern or not, this book is an important one, one that conveys a great deal about what it means to be human as we enter the 21st century. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).
Citation Information
Auerbach, John S., "Review of Self-Relations in the Psychotherapy Process" (2006). ETSU Faculty Works. 309.
https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works-2/309