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Playing Pygmalion: How People Create One Another
Playing Pygmalion How People Create One Another Author:Ruthellen Josselson Like Pygmalion with his Galatea, we create the characters of people in our lives. Although others appear to us to be who they just "are," there are complicated psychological processes, outside of our awareness, that lead us to experience people in ways that we ourselves construct. The processes of how people unconsciously create what t... more »hey both need and dread are not well understood by most therapists. Too often, therapists join their patients in overlooking the persons' own role in creating the relationships in their lives, so that it seems that patients were simply unfortunate to "have" an ungiving mother or to "find" an unloving spouse. Because processes of creation in relationship are largely unconscious, they are hard to see. PLAYING PYGMALION is an effort to trace in psychological terms the subtle interplay by which people create the other. Using examples from literature, film, and clinical work to illustrate these phenomena, the book goes on to consider in depth the relationship narratives of four pairs of ordinary people to demonstrate how people unconsciously "create" one another.« less