The Phoenix Rising Issue

Introduction to The Phoenix Rising Issue

By Diana Fosha and Kari Gleiser

As with the mythic bird, the phoenix, who was reborn from its own ashes, Transformance: The AEDP Journal is springing to life again after a period of dormancy.  In this issue, we present three wonderful articles in our newly re-launched journal that we hope will have been well worth the wait.  First, a lovely and lyrical hymn to the power and process of love in the therapeutic relationship, Leaning into Love: The Radical Shift, by Maryhelen Snyder, tracked closely through the intimate ins and out of connection of both patient and therapist. The therapist’s self disclosure of her own process lets us come very close, identify, empathize, recognize  — and thus deepen our understanding. Next, Seeing the Invisible:  The Role of Recognition in Healing from Neglect and Deprivation, by Kari Gleiser. Gleiser extends her contributions to AEDP’s  understanding of how to work with trauma by taking on pernicious effects of neglect and deprivation, all the more devastating for operating silently and invisibly, and doing so through the process of recognition, in this case,  the therapist’s recognition of huge areas of the patient’s experience, never before seen or acknowledged, much less validated, affirmed, and celebrated.

And finally, last but not least, the neuroscience icing on the cake: What’s Hot in Neuroscience for Psychotherapy, by Richard Hill and Matthew Dahlitz, takes us on a journey through cutting edge research that directly impacts on the therapy process, from memory reconsolidation to neuroglia and beyond. Some or even much of it might prove new to Transformance readers, which is why we are grateful to Hill and Dahlitz for this tour of some previously unexplored territories, which promise quantum leaps in our understanding of how we function and how we heal.

And now a note to our readers: Early issues of the journal featured articles that showcased many of our community’s best writers – articles that would not have been out of place in some of our field’s finest publications.   Our intention as editors was to celebrate the literary and theoretical talents that abound in the AEDP community, but in retrospect, we realized that we may have strayed from our central purpose of the journal:  to provide a spacious playground for ideas, heavily centered around transcript and case material.  While we want to continue welcoming full-length articles proposing new theories and new approaches within AEDP, we also want to encourage submissions that illustrate more of the day-in/day-out workings of AEDP, transcripts that illuminate a certain intervention with clarity, or a session with a powerful outcome.  We offer special encouragement for those of you who have become certified in AEDP to adapt your AEDP certification papers and submit them to Transformance.  And if you have a topic that you are passionate about. consider partnering with us as a guest editor to co-create a  special issue on that topic.  We envision the AEDP journal as a place to share, learn, explore, wonder, play, imagine, wonder — all with accompaniment, all in community.

So dive in, sample the wares, get inspired! And maybe even start working on your article for Transformance.