Mentalizing Power and Powerlessness

In this book, the author discusses with a view to psychotherapeutic practice how power and the exercise of power can be used in a constructive sense. Spontaneously, people tend to associate the topic of power negatively. They mostly talk about their own powerlessness and the power of "those up there", and very rarely about their own striving for power. It is undisputed that power and the exercise of power, as well as dealing with powerlessness, play an important role in psychotherapy. Nevertheless, the constructive and destructive aspects of power are still too little reflected. Here, there is a mentalization deficit on the part of both psychotherapists and patients. In this book questions are asked and suggestions for practice are developed. 



Written for psychotherapists, child and adolescent psychotherapists, family therapists, counselors, psychiatrists, physicians, students, and psychotherapists in training. 


From the contents 

Isit a bad thing to use power, to exert influence in order to get one's way? Where is the boundary between the constructive exercise of power and destructive "power games"? Do some situations require assertiveness and a certain distance and other situations rather closeness and credibility and persuasiveness? 

The author 

Dr. phil. Marie-Luise Althoff, studied mathematics, psychology and education; she is a psychoanalyst, lecturer, supervisor and teaching analyst.

This book is a translation of an original German edition. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation.