"Steven Cooper is among our very finest contributors to the literature on clinical psychoanalysis. This book of essays, many of which were published previously in somewhat different form, continues the high standard he has set in his earlier work. This book is extremely valuable. In reading it I felt invigorated by its ideas and sensibility. And I was grateful to see its beneficial effects on my clinical work. This book would be of real practical use to advanced candidates, senior clinicians, and anyone interested in the analyst’s role in the psychoanalytic process." -Mitchell Wilson, International Journal of Psychoanalysis
"Besides being a great read, Steven Cooper's new book, A Disturbance in the Field, is a unique and vital contribution to the ongoing evolution of psychoanalysis as a body of knowledge and a therapeutic process. Cooper, a classically-trained relational analyst, explicitly enriches both classical and post-classical viewpoints, and by so doing, allows readers of different schools of thought to compare ideas that can find self-reflective space without compromising what already shapes a given reader's analytic identity. This same sensibility is what underlies Cooper's vision of what makes clinical psychoanalysis therapeutic, and is illustrated again and again through superlative case vignettes: To fully engage a patient's sense of self in its own terms, the analyst must be as alive to the patient's ongoing subjectivity as possible, which requires he attend to 'disturbances in the field' in which an idealization of his theory has achieved higher priority than his experiential involvement. Cooper poignantly illuminates how such moments are the pathway to enhanced permeability of the boundary between selfhood and otherness and why, in its broadest sense, the underpinning of all human development is relational." - Philip M. Bromberg, Ph.D., author, Awakening the Dreamer (2006) and Standing in the Spaces (1998)
"In every chapter of this lucid, deeply felt, thoughtful, and accessible book, Steven Cooper lays out the case that whatever clinical matter he is addressing (and the book is thoroughly clinical) is best understood by reference to multiple views, usually multiple theoretical views, each of which serves to contextualize the others. The result is far more significant and interesting than a simple eclecticism. Cooper has significant relational and contemporary Kleinian commitments, which he shares with us, and he does much more than simply advise that we pick and choose from different theories. Instead, via his concept of the pluralistic third, Cooper uses his immersion in different views to expand his clinical imagination - and ours. This is a wise and mature book." - Donnel Stern, Ph.D., Training and Supervising Analyst, William Alanson White Institute
"This outstanding volume of essays - based on the author's contributions to the first decade of the 21st century - presents an extraordinary synthesis of classical and contemporary concepts and methods of psychoanalysis, with immediate relevance to clinical practice. The author's encyclopedic knowledge of the psychoanalytic literature - masterfully cited to indicate the ideas he has adopted from others, always with generous appreciation, yet also frequently in frank disagreement without a trace of polemic - brings the reader into the exciting center of current clinical psychoanalysis. His critiques of the work of contemporary authors, explaining their contributions as well as their deficiencies, especially one-sided positions, offer a model of balance between innovation and conservation. The extensive clinical illustrations, with detailed evaluation of his participation in the analytic work and particular attention to its imperfections, form the heart of this book. Among many valuable innovations, in a triumph of clinical integrity and self-evaluation, the author cogently emphasizes the need to include the 'new bad object' along with the good. These extensive clinical discussions, more than anything else, highlight the power of the modern focus on countertransference and the analyst's contributions to the psychoanalytic dialogue." - Anton O. Kris, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
"...if you are relationally inclined in your own therapeutic work, then there are few guides who can make their way down the complex and convoluted rabbit hole of transference dynamics with anything like the confidence and depth of knowledge of Steven Cooper. This collection of essays feels like an engaging visit by special invitation to Cooper's consulting room, where he brings forth some of his more colorful patients and his intriguing and sometimes unexpected thoughts about the transference dynamics as they unfold." - John Soderlund, in New Therapist
