Reshaping the Self: Reflections on Renewal Through Therapy

We are organized around the double coordinates of mind-body and self-other, says author Michael Eigen. The story of therapy is, in part, the story of how the unconscious sense of self-other and mind-body expands to allow a fuller, more open self to emerge.

This volume centers around the therapies of two individuals. Lynn and Les came of age in the 1960s, and their inner beings were stamped with the turmoil and personalist sensibility of that era. As the ensuing years swept them on into careers, marriage and family, they felt a nagging sense that something was lacking. Their lives were full but disappointing.

Les and Lynn’s dissatisfaction is mirrored in the problems being experienced by many others of their generation. The cut-throat world of business in which Les operated and the bureaucratic school system of which Lynn was a part worked against expression and fulfillment of their personal values. They needed help in finding ways to pursue their careers and fashion productive lives that were congruent with who they felt they were. Without this help, they were in danger of losing what was most precious to them: their very sense of self was being corroded by destructive forces they could not cope with.

Unfolding on these pages is the story of how Les and Lynn struggled through the fears involved in initiating the changes necessary to reshape their lives and their selves into something they could affirm and believe in – something at once useful and fulfilling for themselves and their communities.

The therapist’s personal experience and reflections are very much a part of this book. Paralleling the accounts of the defining moments in Les’s and Lynn’s therapies are the author’s candid observations about what he felt at the time and what he feels now, many years later. In readable, engaging prose, the author examines the complex roles of therapist and therapy, including self-other and mind-body relations, the dramatic interplay of faith and catastrophe, primary process, and other elements of the psychotherapy process that allow one to experience the damaged self and move beyond it.