Toward a Psychology of Uncertainty

Doris Brothers, Ph.D., a psychologist and psychoanalyst with a private practice in New York City, is a cofounder and training and supervising analyst at The Training and Research Institute for Self Psychology. Her previous publications include Falling Backwards: An Exploration of Trust and Self Experience (W. W. Norton, 1995) and The Shattered Self: A Psychoanalytic Study of Trauma (Analytic Press, 1988), which she wrote with Richard B. Ulman. She is currently participating in an online discussion group based on her recent paper "Trust, Uncertainty, and Therapeutic Alliance in Trauma-Centered Treatment" (http://blogs.confer.uk.com/).

• The Laboratory and the Labyrinth: An Introduction. Making the Unbearable Bearable: Regulation, Expectation and the Experience of Existential Uncertainty. Trauma as Exile: Terror, Shame and the Destruction of Certainty. Sanctuary on the Ledge: Trauma-Centered Treatment. Muting the Sirens of Certainty: Beyond Dichotomous Gender and the Oedipus Complex. To Die with Our Dead: Ghosts, Ghouls and the Denial of Life. Faith, False Gods and the Surrender of Certitude. In the Ashes of Burnout: Lost (and Found) Faith. Epilogue: Rewinding the Thread.

"How much can one have to say about the idea of uncertainty in living and in clinical practice? With each chapter of this eloquent, deeply personal and yet universally applicable book, I thought that the next chapter would have to be redundant. I was most definitely wrong. Each chapter took me on a journey – sometimes a painful one – that has enriched my own life and has added greatly to my clinical sensitivity and depth. Over and over, I found myself grateful to the author for having the emotional courage to plumb the ‘trauma-generated certitudes,’ for in so doing, I emerge from the reading a more resilient, more open-minded clinician."- Lynne Jacobs, Ph.D., Psy.D., Training and Supervising Analyst, Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles; Co-Founder, Pacific Gestalt Institute, Los Angeles"This is a courageous and inspiring book, both scholarly and accessible. Doris Brothers invites and challenges us to bring center-stage in psychoanalytic thinking aspects often marginalized: trauma, uncertainty, gender, faith. We begin to notice personal and institutional methods of reducing life-and-death uncertainties to simplistic and tightly-held "certitudes". These methods, including denial, authoritarianism, rigid categories, and even cult-like relations, may lead to burnout and despair. Brothers’ clinical accounts, illustrating her perspective for psychotherapists of varied theoretical persuasions, are gripping and thought-provoking. A great read."- Donna Orange, Ph.D., Psy.D., Author, Emotional Understanding: Studies in Psychoanalytic Epistemology "In bringing a relational systems sensibility to the ubiquitous condition of existential uncertainty, Doris Brothers has created a new and compelling language for the understanding of our traumatic worlds and their therapeutic transformation. This book is a major contribution not only to psychoanalysis but to all the healing disciplines."- Maxwell S. Sucharov, M.D., Member, International Council for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology"I think there is a great deal to be learned, thought about, and enjoyed in this book for any members of the broad psychological audience. It is a remarkably frank, clear, and non-presumptuous book, courageously presented by an obviously thoughtful and very caring practitioner. I highly recommend it."- Edwin L. Hersch, Ph.D., Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 39, 2008