Judith Rustin Interview

Dr Dave has recently posted his interview (#339) with Judith Rustin who has recently published Infant Research and Neuroscience at Work in Psychotherapy: Exanding the Clinical Repertoire. (WW Norton, ISBN 978-0-393-70719-9). Click on the icon to the left to go to the interview page at Shrink Rap Radio.

Judith Rustin, LCSW is a faculty member and supervising psychoanalyst at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, New York City, The Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center, in New York City and The Chinese American Psychoanalytic Association. She has lectured nationally and internationally and published scholarly papers on self-psychology, intersubjectivity systems theory and more recently the interface of infant research and neuroscience with these two psychoanalytic theories. Her published scholarly papers cover these same subjects and areas of expertise with particular emphasis on their application to the therapeutic dyad and the clinical process. In 2005, Other Press published Forms of Intersubjectivity in Infant Research and Adult Treatment, written with collaborators, Beatrice Beebe, Steven Knoblauch and Dorienne Sorter.

Prior to becoming a Psychoanalyst, Judith was an Assistant Professor, (Field Faculty) at the Columbia University School of Social Work. During that tenure she helped to develop a program that integrated disabled students on a college campus and developed models of programs to insure permanency planning for children.

Currently, she maintains a private practice in New York City.

About her new book:

Translating recent neuroscience and infant research to clinical practice.

By decoding the scientific data, this book explains how recent findings from brain and infant research can expand a clinician’s understanding of the therapist-client relationship and, in turn, improve how therapy is done. Offering clinical insights into key developmental mechanisms, Judith Rustin highlights the possibilities for new and creative treatment protocols. She summarizes and synthesizes basic concepts and ideas derived from infant research and neuroscience for clinicians not familiar with the literature. Using examples from her own practice to show how a clinician might integrate these concepts into psychodynamic practice, she invites other clinicians to experiment with finding their own pathways to integration of this valuable material in the clinical endeavor. Rustin explains how self- and mutual regulation (or bidirectional interaction)—concepts of which are both firmly grounded in the dyadic systems model of interaction—develop in infancy, how they contribute to a growing sense of self, and how they ultimately serve as templates for future interactions with others. She explains and shows how an understanding of them enriches a two-person perspective in clinical work. She then focuses on the brain science behind four additional concepts, each of which has particular application to clinical work: memory, the mind–body connection, the fear system, and mirror neurons and the concept of shared circuitry. Clinical material is interwoven with explications of each concept.