The Complexity of Connection: Writings from the Stone Center’s Jean Baker Miller Training Institute

Product Description

In this important third volume from the Stone Center at Wellesley College, founding scholars and new voices expand and deepen the Center’s widely embraced psychological theory of connection as the core of human growth and development. The volume presents an absorbing and practical examination of connection and disconnection at both individual and societal levels. Chapters explore how experiences of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, and gender influence relationships, and how people can connect across difference and disagreement. Also discussed are practical implications of the theory for psychotherapy, for the raising of sons, and for workplace and organizational issues.

Review

“In a culture toxic with aggression, competition, and ‘power over’ images, this book seeks to heal. Whether discussing race; isolation and loneliness; or raising caring, empathic sons, the authors write with authority and heart about important and deeply relevant issues. I cannot think of a book we need more in our sad, hard times.”–Mary Pipher, PhD, author of
Reviving Ophelia and
Letters to a Young Therapist

“To encounter the transformative vision of the Stone Center in a single volume is always a special pleasure. The theoretical and clinical wisdom in this book is stunning in its power to change the reader in some fundamental way, and to move the field of psychotherapy toward a more accurate, compassionate, and multilayered understanding of what hurts and heals in human relationships.”–Harriet Lerner, PhD, author of
The Dance of Anger

“This is the book where the Stone Center theorists ask: ‘What purpose and whose interests do psychological theories serve?’ Refusing complicity with a culture of domination, they explore the complexity of human connection–its cultural contexts and therapeutic challenges. Readers will find an invitation to think about complicity and competition, especially among women, and also a guide to envisioning how connection can follow disconnection in families and at work as well as in therapy.”–Carol Gilligan, PhD, author of
The Birth of Pleasure

About the Author

Judith V. Jordan, PhD, is the codirector and a founding scholar of the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute (JBMTI) of the Stone Center at Wellesley College. Coauthor of
Women’s Growth in Connection and editor of
Women’s Growth in Diversity, she is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and works as a therapist, supervisor, and consultant.

Maureen Walker, PhD, is a licensed psychologist with an independent practice in psychotherapy and multicultural consultation in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A faculty member and the director of program development at the JBMTI, she is the coeditor of
How Connections Heal. She is also the associate director of MBA Support Services at Harvard Business School.

Linda M. Hartling, PhD, is the associate director of the JBMTI. She is also a member of an international team establishing the first Center for Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction Part I. Deepening Our Understanding of Relationship 1. Toward Connection and Competence Judith V. Jordan 2. Relational Resilience Judith V. Jordan 3. Relational Awareness: Transforming Disconnection Judith V. Jordan 4. Therapists’ Authenticity Jean Baker Miller, Judy V. Jordan, Irene P. Stiver, Maureen Walker, Janet Surrey, and Natalie S. Eldridge 5. Race, Self, and Society: Relational Challenges in a Culture of Disconnection Maureen Walker 6. Shame and Humiliation: From Isolation to Relational Transformation Linda M. Hartling, Wendy Rosen, Maureen Walker, and Judith V. Jordan 7. Racial Images and and Relational Possibilities Maureen Walker and Jean Baker Miller 8. Women, Race, and Religion: A Dialogue of Black and White Andrea Ayvazian and Beverly Daniel Tatum Part II. Applying the Power of Connection 9. Couple Therapy: A Relational Approach Stephen J. Bergman and J