Affect Intolerance in Patient and Analyst

The ability of psychotherapists to tolerate their own feelings in the clinical situation determines how their patients experience and tolerate their own intense_and often distressing_affect. Dr. Stanley J. Coen draws on his own struggles with the most difficult and challenging patients in his practice, and finds that affect intolerance, in both patient and therapist, can be mitigated and understood when therapists broaden their emotional range, enabling them to engage in emotionally richer interactions with the patient. The more of their own feelings and wishes that clinicians can take responsibility for, the more they can tolerate, contain, and eventually interpret what patients find emotionally unbearable. Dr. Coen describes, in detail, how he works with difficult patients, trying to engage them as deeply and fully as both they and he can tolerate. A Jason Aronson Book