Download Author: Scharff, David E., M.D.

David E. Scharff, M.D. is Chair of the Board, Co-Founder and Former Director, International Psychotherapy Institute; Chair, The International Psychoanalytic Association’s Working Group on Family and Couple Psychoanalysis; Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and Georgetown University; Supervising Analyst, International Institute for Psychoanalytic Training; Teaching Analyst, Washington Psychoanalytic Institute; Honorary Fellow, the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, London; Former President, American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists, and former Vice-President, International Association for Couple and Family Psychoanalysis. He is a Child and Adult Analyst in Private Practice in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Educated at Yale, Harvard Medical School, The Tavistock Clinic and The Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, Dr. Scharff has been author and editor of more than 30 books, with foundational texts on family and couple and individual psychoanalytic therapy, the work of Ronald Fairbairn, sexual difficulty, and innovative training of psychotherapists and psychoanalysts. He has organized more than 100 conferences in the United States and abroad, and taught internationally on five continents including 28 countries. His recent initiatives have focused on teaching psychoanalytic couple and family therapy in China, where he has organized an innovative continuous training program for students from all across China and Taiwan. To this end he is founder of a journal devoted to the newly emergent field of psychoanalysis in China, called “Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in China.” At the same time as Chair of the Couple and Family Psychoanalysis Working Group of the International Psychoanalytic Association, he has, together with members of the group, organized meetings of the working group and international congresses that further the study of family and couple psychoanalysis around the world.

Recent publications in these areas have included “Psychoanalytic Couple Therapy” edited with Jill Scharff; “Fairbairn and the Object Relations Tradition,” edited with Graham Clarke; “Psychoanalysis in China,” edited with Sverre Varvin; and “The Interpersonal Unconscious,” written with Jill Scharff. Books in process include “Enrique Pichon Riviѐre: A Psychoanalytic Pioneer,” edited with Roberto Losso and Lea Setton; and “Family and Couple Psychoanalysis Around the World”, edited with Elizabeth Palacios.

48 eBooks available.

The Object Relations of the Therapist

One of the richest areas of growth for a trainee at every stage is in the interplay between the professional’s personal issues and the issues of the client. In the object relations approach to therapy, we focus our work in this area because this is where we can understand clients from inside their resonance with our own object relations.

The Interlocking of Self and Object during Life Development

In the family, each person is a primary object for every other family member. Not only are the parents the primary objects for the children, but the children become new primary objects for each parent, potentially strengthening the marital bond because the parents share the children as objects for care and concern as well as for introjection.

Role of Relationships of Children and Adults in the Family

An exploration of the differences between the child and the adult in relation to the family highlights features of the reciprocal relationship between children and adults and enhances our understanding of the formation of psychic structure throughout the life cycle.

Oedipus Revisited in His Family

The Oedipus situation is not just a stage in the individual’s psychosexual development. It is a collaboration between the child and the family. When
we examine it from the standpoint of the constant interaction of self and object, the picture is one of mutual influence between child and parent, self and
external object, and self and internal object.

Dreams in Marital Therapy

This chapter focuses specifically on the use of dreams in the course of marital therapy, examine the interplay between self and object in the dreams of couples, and look at the use of the dream in understanding the couple’s transferential relationship to the therapist.

The Dream as Communication between Self and Others

Dreams told in the interpersonal setting reveal a new aspect of the unconscious: family members know things unknown to the dreamer. Using this perspective, we can apply the use of dreams to the communication between self and object in family and marital therapy.

The Birth of the Self in Therapy

Internal objects are born into the relationship with the analyst. The analyst is experienced as the background facilitator, the parent of opportunity and of space for growth. The patient also experiences the analyst as the object of desire and hate, the object mother and father. In the confusion and synergy of these two lies the patient’s struggle. In exploring the relationship between them, the patient may find his or her self.

Therapeutic Transformation of Screen Memories

Early memories, both painful and pleasant, tend to represent condensations of important early situations, relationships, and feelings that have been frozen in time. These memories, which are often introduced early in therapy and psychoanalysis, are condensations that convey the surface of internal object relations just as dreams and fantasies do. As such, they can provide important clues to events and relationships that subtly but surely continue to have a significant effect on a patient’s life through their internalization as psychic structure.