will teach you how to read gifted writers for inspiration and practical lessons in the craft of writing; apply the principles and techniques of the paradigmatic, narrative, lyric narrative, evocative, and enactive modes of clinical prose; and put what you learn immediately into practice in eighty-four writing exercises.

 

Each of the five modes uses different means to construct worlds out of language. The paradigmatic mode abstracts ideas from experience to build concepts and theories. The narrative mode organizes experience through time, creating meaningful relationships between causes and effects. Lyric narratives present events unfolding in an uncertain present before hindsight anchors meaning. The evocative mode works by invitation and suggestion, and the enactive mode creates an experience to be lived as well as thought.

 

Structure and Spontaneity in Clinical Prose is fundamentally a book about reading and writing in new and different ways. Whether you are doing the exercises, drafting a paper, writing clinical notes, or preparing for supervision, by experimenting with various modes of clinical prose, you will make discoveries about your patients, your work, and yourself.

 

This book is an invaluable resource for new and experienced psychoanalysts and psychotherapists and for students, teachers, editors, and writers in the humanities and social sciences.

 

Chapters

 

 Preface

 1.  A Writing Workshop

 2.  The Poetry of What We Do and the Playground of Clinical Prose

 3.  Narrative Meaning and Technique

 4.  Short Stories

 5.  The Evocative Mode

 6.  The Enactive Mode

 7.   Lyric Narratives

 8.  The Paradigmatic Mode

 9.   Narrative Moves and Interweaves

10.  Voice  

11.  Introductions

12.  The Temporal Axis

13.  The Conceptual Axis

14.  Shapes of Arguments

15.  Using Sources

16.  Conclusions

17.  Revising

18.  Confidentiality and Disguise

 Afterword

     

 

Cover image: "All Souls," 2010, watercolor by Danielle Klinenberg,

used with permission of the artist © 2015