Steven Stern

This book focuses on the recognition and psychoanalytic treatment of a debilitating form of early relational trauma poignantly described by Steven Stern as airless world syndrome. A patient can be said to be living in an airless world when one or both parents have failed to recognize, or worse, actively negated their child’s subjective experience and needs, instead imposing their subjective reality on the child such that the child had no choice but to adopt the parents’ reality as their own. When a child’s mind is captured in this way—what Stern calls identification with negation—the result is an unconscious bondage to the internalized negating other which can be disabling to the senses of self, personal agency, and realness. With extended clinical examples in every chapter, Stern brings the reader into the depths of each patient’s airless world and the co-created needed relationship that ultimately, fitfully transforms it. Written in a detailed yet accessible style, this book is invaluable to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in practice and in training.

This book focuses on the recognition and psychoanalytic treatment of a debilitating form of early relational trauma poignantly described by Steven Stern as airless world syndrome. A patient can be said to be living in an airless world when one or both parents have failed to recognize, or worse, actively negated their child’s subjective experience and needs, instead imposing their subjective reality on the child such that the child had no choice but to adopt the parents’ reality as their own. When a child’s mind is captured in this way—what Stern calls identification with negation—the result is an unconscious bondage to the internalized negating other which can be disabling to the senses of self, personal agency, and realness. With extended clinical examples in every chapter, Stern brings the reader into the depths of each patient’s airless world and the co-created needed relationship that ultimately, fitfully transforms it. Written in a detailed yet accessible style, this book is invaluable to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in practice and in training.

This open book presents the latest advances in models and data for evaluating the efficacy of vocational rehabilitation (VR) services provided to individuals with disabilities. For the first time, the VR-ROI (return on investment) model is used to simultaneously compare short- and long-term labor market outcomes across multiple state agencies and four distinct disability groups. For each disability group, the book provides information about the return on investment, as measured by the rate of return, for VR services. By offering this broad and in-depth evaluation in concert with intuitive explanations of the model and the estimation methodology, the book helps to bridge the gap between research and practice and to equip stakeholders with data-driven insights to enhance vocational rehabilitation programs for individuals with disabilities. This is an open access book.

Needed Relationships and Psychoanalytic Healing is both a personal analytic credo and a multidimensional approach to thinking about clinical interaction. The book’s central theme is that of analytic needed relationships—the science and art of co-creating unique, evolving relational experiences fitted to each patient’s implicit therapeutic aims and needs. Steven Stern argues that, while we need psychoanalytic theories to "grow the receptors and processors" necessary to sense, understand, and connect with our patients, these often tend to frame the therapist’s participation in terms of theoretical and technical categories rather than offering a more holistic view of the relationship in all of its human complexity. Stern believes that a new set of higher order constructs is needed to counteract this tendency. In addition to his own concept of needed relationships, he invokes principles from the work of renowned developmental researcher and theorist, Louis Sander: especially his concept of relational fittedness. Stern draws on the work of Freud, Bion, Winnicott, Kohut, and a broad spectrum of contemporary psychoanalytic authors, in fleshing out the therapeutic implications of Sander’s (and Stern’s own) vision. The result is a rich, humane, and accessible narrative. Needed Relationships and Psychoanalytic Healing offers diverse clinical examples in which you will find Stern engaging with each of his patients in idiomatic, spontaneous ways as he attempts to contour interventions to the evolving analytic situation. This case material will inspire therapist-readers to feel freer to find their own creative voices and idioms of participation, as they seek to meet each patient within the psychoanalytic space. The book is intended for psychoanalysts and psychodynamic therapists at all levels of experience, including those in training.

Needed Relationships and Psychoanalytic Healing is both a personal analytic credo and a multidimensional approach to thinking about clinical interaction. The book’s central theme is that of analytic needed relationships—the science and art of co-creating unique, evolving relational experiences fitted to each patient’s implicit therapeutic aims and needs. Steven Stern argues that, while we need psychoanalytic theories to "grow the receptors and processors" necessary to sense, understand, and connect with our patients, these often tend to frame the therapist’s participation in terms of theoretical and technical categories rather than offering a more holistic view of the relationship in all of its human complexity. Stern believes that a new set of higher order constructs is needed to counteract this tendency. In addition to his own concept of needed relationships, he invokes principles from the work of renowned developmental researcher and theorist, Louis Sander: especially his concept of relational fittedness. Stern draws on the work of Freud, Bion, Winnicott, Kohut, and a broad spectrum of contemporary psychoanalytic authors, in fleshing out the therapeutic implications of Sander’s (and Stern’s own) vision. The result is a rich, humane, and accessible narrative. Needed Relationships and Psychoanalytic Healing offers diverse clinical examples in which you will find Stern engaging with each of his patients in idiomatic, spontaneous ways as he attempts to contour interventions to the evolving analytic situation. This case material will inspire therapist-readers to feel freer to find their own creative voices and idioms of participation, as they seek to meet each patient within the psychoanalytic space. The book is intended for psychoanalysts and psychodynamic therapists at all levels of experience, including those in training.