Flap text: Patients enter psychotherapy because they suffer from distressing symptoms or relationship problems and want to change something about them. At the same time, change is frightening: on the one hand, it calls into question an often painstakingly achieved psychological balance. On the other hand, the many abysses that patients must overcome on their developmental path still lie shrouded in fog. That is why they oppose the therapeutic process of change with various forms of resistance from the very beginning. This volume explores how this phenomenon is understood across different therapeutic approaches and what it means in clinical work. The eight forms of resistance identified in psychoanalysis are presented in detail using illustrative case vignettes. The book highlights the importance of the psychodynamic principle that resistance must be addressed before the underlying content can be explored and shows why all forms of therapy risk failure when it is not recognized and worked through.
The Author: Thomas Abel is a licensed psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, trauma therapist, ISTFP-certified therapist in Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP), group analyst, supervisor and training analyst. He is based in Berlin, where he works in private practice within the German public health system. He also teaches at several psychotherapy and psychoanalytic training institutes.
The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence. A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content.
Copyright 2026 by springer
Thomas Abel (Ed.): Handbook of Object Relations Theory
Key Concepts in Contemporary Psychoanalysis – Foreword by Otto Kernberg
This handbook is the first publication to provide a comprehensive overview of the key concepts of object-relations theory, which is currently the mainstream approach to psychoanalysis worldwide. It offers a structured and easily understandable overview of the central concepts of modern psychoanalysis. Each chapter is dedicated to an important author who has contributed to the development of object relations theory.
The list begins with early pioneers such as Ian Suttie, Alfred Adler, and Otto Rank, continues with the psychoanalysts who consolidated the object relations theory, such as Melanie Klein, Clare and Donald Winnicott, Paula Heimann, and Edith Jacobson, and includes key figures who built upon object relations theory to develop their own original contributions to clinical psychology. These include developments such as John Bowlby’s and Mary Ainsworth’s attachment theory, Peter Fonagy’s concept of mentalisation, and Otto Kernberg’s transference-focused psychotherapy. The third part presents modern, intersubjective approaches, such as those of Thomas Ogden, Stephen Mitchell, Jessica Benjamin, and Donna Orange. They outline the direction in which object-relations theory is set to develop.
The Handbook of Object Relations theory serves as a comprehensive introductory text for those new to the field who wish to learn about the main currents in contemporary psychoanalysis, for experienced practitioners wishing to revisit and deepen their understanding of certain aspects, and for researchers and practitioners working with other approaches who wish to understand psychoanalytic theory, which reflects a broad spectrum of clinical and theoretical approaches in contemporary clinical psychology.
“In this volume, a comprehensive, clear and fascinating account of the history of contemporary psychoanalytic object relations theory, the reader will find the discovery of the elements of this theory, the various theoretical and technical developments that these insights have generated, and the alternative formulations of object relations theory.”
