The Psychotherapeutic Stance

This book provides a thorough critique of the dominating medical understanding of psychotherapy and argues for a dynamic relational understanding of psychotherapy, deeply founded in the most important results from empirical psychotherapy research. In the first part, the book critically examines the traditional focus on technical factors in psychotherapy based on available empirical research on the subject. It asks questions about whether specific techniques cure specific diagnoses or therapists and therapeutic relationships that cure persons. Part II of the book argues that the currently dominating medical understanding of psychotherapy must be challenged by a better understanding of psychopathology and psychotherapy that contextualizes the relationship between therapist and the patient. Overall, this book provides a new approach to some of the most important questions in psychotherapy and discusses what it means to think and work psychotherapeutically. The book is highly relevant for professionals in clinical/psychotherapy training and for advanced courses in psychotherapy, including courses on mentalization-based therapy, psychoanalytic psychotherapy and eclectic psychotherapy. 


Carsten René Jørgensen is Professor at the Department of Psychology, Aarhus University. He received a PhD in clinical psychology from Aarhus University in 1999. He has worked as an associate professor at the University of Aalborg and has been at Aarhus University for nearly two decades, where he became a full professor in clinical psychology in 2009. He has been Head of the Department of Psychology (2014-16), and vice head of the department (2016-19). Since 2002 Professor Jørgensen has also been affiliated with the Clinic for Personality Disorders, Aarhus University Hospital, Risskov/Skejby, where he has done empirical psychotherapy research and worked with long-term psychodynamic (including mentalization-based and psychoanalytic) psychotherapy for borderline and other personality disorders. He has completed formal training in group analytic psychotherapy from the Institute for Group Analysis, Copenhagen (1994-97). In 1993-96, he worked as a clinical psychologist at the regional psychiatric hospital (Hillerød) in the greater Copenhagen area (Day Hospital Department and Department for Psychotherapy in Helsingør). He has published six books (all published by the leading Scandinavian publisher Hans Reitzels Forlag in Copenhagen), around 20 book chapters in peer-reviewed books, and over 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals.