Review of The anatomy of psychotherapy.

Reviews the book, The anatomy of psychotherapy by Lawrence Friedman (see record 1988-97848-000). The authors' aim is to clarify the various theories of psychoanalysis from Freud to the current and to examine in depth the personal features of the analyst in the context of his/her work. With a knowledge of the entire range of psychoanalytic literature rare with most theorists or practitioners, the author reviews the philosophical developments of Freudian theory. He includes in this review some of the frictions, disputes and subtle disagreements within the classical analytic tradition. He then proceeds to describe the most significant of the contemporary deviations from classical theory (e.g., object relations, interpersonal theory, self psychology, action language) and compares and contrasts them with each other. Friedman has long been a commentator on contemporary psychoanalytic developments and he has adapted his many articles into this work. The book itself is organized into six sections, focusing on the personal and theoretical. It is well written but quite dense. Much concentration is needed. I believe that one must have an interest in psychoanalytic theory as well as a rather sophisticated appreciation of it to truly enjoy this book. It is long and detailed and I imagine difficult to get through without an intrinsic interest in the "anatomy" of psychoanalysis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Transference: Its meaning and function in psychoanalytic therapy.

Reviews the book, Transference: its meaning and function in psychoanalytic therapy by Benjamin Wolstein (see record 1955-01021-000). The book reflects the groping trends of opinion developing from therapeutic experience and from increased awareness of the problems of definition. Many questions related to transference are brought closer to the status of answerable questions. The author sees transference in terms of observable here-and-now behavior. He keeps the focus on present interactions with careful attention to the therapist as an interbehaving organism (countertransference) rather than as a hypnotic authority. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Transference. Its meaning and function in psychoanalytic therapy.

Reviews the book, Transference. Its meaning and function in psychoanalytic therapy by Benjamin Wolstein. Introduction by Clara Thompson (1954). After a lucid introduction by Clara Thompson, which summarizes historical trends in the concept of transference, the author clarifies the objectives of the monograph. Essentially this is a critical study, by no means pretending to be a comprehensive survey of the field. There is an initial attempt to orient the reader toward certain basic scientific postulates from which the conception of transference is derived. Wolstein attempts to orient the reader toward the essential philosophical assumptions which underlie the theoretical constructs of Freud, who worked essentially in the atmosphere of a mechanistic, monistic, reductive scientific world. This is undoubtedly a difficult, somewhat overwritten, and occasionally exasperating book, but it is a brilliant one that raises important issues, faces up to them squarely, and goes to the core of many problems in current psychotherapeutic theory and technique. Practicing therapists, personality theorists, social scientists, and advanced graduate students will find it stimulating and provocative of serious self-searching. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Negotiating consent in psychotherapy.

Reviews the book, Negotiating consent in psychotherapy by Patrick O'Neill (see record 1999-08089-000). This book examines the importance of negotiating consent in psychotherapy, the extent to which it occurs between client and therapist during therapy, and its impact on the therapeutic process. The author achieves this through the use of qualitative research methods, conducting in-depth interviews with clients and therapists alike. O'Neill also incorporates the concept of narrative construction to frame the therapeutic process. According to the reviewer, this book is straightforward and refreshingly free from psychological jargon so it can be read by both professionals and the general public. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Heterosexual masculinities: Contemporary perspectives from psychoanalytic gender theory.

Reviews the book, Heterosexual masculinities: Contemporary perspectives from psychoanalytic gender theory edited by Bruce Reis and Robert Grossmark (see record 2009-01378-000). Could Freud, and subsequent psychoanalytic theorists, have been as wrong about the psychology of men as they were about women? The organizing premise of this useful new collection of essays is that psychoanalytic gender theory, including the explosion of new gender theory over the past 40 years, has never adequately addressed the topics of masculinity and male heterosexuality. This volume makes a compelling case for that premise, and at the same time represents a promising start in addressing the deficiencies in existing theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Clinical applications of the Adult Attachment Interview.

Reviews the book, Clinical applications of the Adult Attachment Interview edited by Howard Steele and Miriam Steele (see record 2008-04549-000). Although the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), created by Mary Main and her colleagues, is among the most important research instruments in developmental and clinical psychology, the details of its administration and scoring are known only to certified coders and examples of its clinical utility are, for the everyday clinician, difficult to find. This edited volume draws the curtain far enough to reveal the major inner-workings of the interview and throws light on the penetrating ways it can inform any psychotherapy. The editors, Howard and Miriam Steele, themselves clinically minded attachment researchers and well versed in the AAI and its sister interviews, have done a remarkable job of recruiting clinicians and clinician-researchers who more than make good on the promise of the volume’s title. This volume is best suited to those already acquainted with attachment theory and the major findings of attachment research. It will help clinical graduate students tune their ears to attachment-informed ways of listening and thinking, help established clinicians attend to the nuances of linguistic structure to inform clinical understanding and intervention, and inspire researchers new to interview-based methods of investigation. Readers will not find, and the editors did not intend to include, debates on the merits of the interview’s complexity or a discussion of the much needed rapprochement between researchers who favor the AAI and researchers who rely on paper-and-pencil inventories of attachment security. The Steeles fill an critical gap in the clinical literature on attachment; outside of single chapters that give high quality but necessarily brief overviews of the AAI (e.g., Hesse, 2008; Levy & Kelly, 2009), I am not aware of another book that offers as unobstructed a view of how the AAI is conducted and coded or of the many ways the interview can be used as a clinical tool. Outside the expensive, labor-intensive AAI trainings given around the world, this volume may be as close as many of us will get to the means to appreciate, learn, and use the AAI in practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The foundations of psychoanalysis: A philosophical critique.

Reviews the book by A. Grünbaum, a work of importance in the current, apparently ever-widening, debates about the "scienticity" of psychoanalysis. Grünbaum makes it clear that the inquiry moves toward a verdict of unproven with respect to the scientific claims of psychoanalytic clinical theory, perhaps even the stronger verdict of unprovable in the terms in which it is traditionally cast. Yet Grünbaum is not hospitable to the promiscuous reconstructions that set psychoanalysis apart from the mainstream of scientific endeavor, whether on subjectivist or phenomenological or hermeneutical grounds. As Grünbaum sees it, Freud rightly claimed that psychoanalysis was to be judged as a science in its study of human processes. Grünbaum's respect for Freud is given body by examining how Freud at various stages of his development formulated the logic of his own position and the structure of objections which he was setting out explicitly to answer. The first third of the book deals with broader philosophical foundations, the remainder with the specific critique of psychoanalytic clinical theory. Grünbaum's critique taps the deeper issues of the comparison of the sciences of nature and those of man, of the relation of science and the humanities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Clinical values: Emotions that guide psychoanalytic treatment.

Reviews the book Clinical Values: Emotions That Guide Psychoanalytic Treatment (2004), by Sandra Buechler. Buechler, a training and supervising analyst at the William Alanson White Institute, sets out to elucidate a number of seldom spoken-about tasks of the analyst in this thoughtful and often inspiring book. Drawing on 20 years of experience as an analyst, she sheds an intimate light on the analyst's struggle against loneliness, burnout, anxiety, and outright feelings of fear and intimidation as well as on the need to remain inquisitive, interested, and purposeful. In the first chapter of her book, Buechler directly and indirectly raises some of the questions that have concerned psychoanalysis for the last 20 years. She ponders, for instance, whether there are such things as truth and reality that exist a priori and independently of what the analyst and patient "cocreate" in the consulting room. Is the analyst's knowledge an illusion that is detrimental to the goal of fostering curiosity in treatment? What is the role of theory in treatment? Buechler manages to pose these controversial questions in such a way that one can easily lose sight of what is indeed so controversial about them. This is mainly because these issues are discussed as subheadings to her stated central focus--a set of clinical values that guide or ought to guide the analyst's work. However, Buechler's recommendations for addressing these inherent challenges become a polemical and, to my mind, an equally, if not more, interesting subject of discussion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Recent developments in psychoanalysis: A critical evaluation.

Reviews the book, Recent developments in psychoanalysis: A critical evaluation by Morris N. Eagle (see record 1987-98252-000). This is, I believe, one of the most important books of psychoanalytic scholarship to emerge in the last few years. Morris Eagle has written a book that reviews and attempts to bring clarity to some of these newer speculations, while simultaneously seeking to maintain those aspects of historical scholarship that can withstand the test of time and prove relevant today. Eagle critically assesses the contributions of object relations theory, instinct theory, the psychoanalytic theory of therapy, problems of metapsychology and psychoanalytic epistemology, self psychology, the role of evidence in the formulation of clinical theory, the structural model of the mind, and the psychoanalytic theory of anxiety; that he is able to do so succinctly and coherently is a testimony to the focused intensity of much of the thinking in this provocative book. In conclusion, whether one agrees or not with Eagle's points, this book may be profitably read by students, psychologists, and psychoanalysts interested in the contemporary psychoanalytic scene. It joins a growing body of recent critical scholarship seeking to render psychoanalysis as a more humane, tough, and thoughtful discipline. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Fundamentals of psychoanalytic technique.

Reviews the book "Fundamentals of psychoanalytic technique," by Trygve Braat?y (see record 1955-00974-000). Braat?y, a slightly off-beat psychoanalyst, writes as a facile essayist, drawing on a vast fund of intriguingly patterned knowledge, often careless with words in his first approximations, but showing profound thoughtfulness and meticulous patience in setting forth his material. The material itself will be of variable interest to most psychologists. His book is a fascinating development in the gradually emerging rapprochement between those analysts who are completely unconscious and those psychologists who permit themselves to think only with the 10 per cent of their iceberg minds that maintains a bobbling existence above sea level. While much of the book lacks the authority of firmly established evidence, its purpose is more to consider implications that go beyond the evidence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Learning process in psychoanalytic supervision: Complexities and challenges.

Reviews the book, Learning process in psychoanalytic supervision: Complexities and challenges by Paul A. DeWald (see record 1987-97784-000). This book is a wonderful contribution to the field of supervision. It is the only book available that presents the actual supervision sessions of one ongoing supervisee with one long-term psychoanalytic patient as they were transcribed. DeWald also offers a review of the supervisory literature, his view of the supervisory process, his supervisory reports, and a chapter from the supervisee discussing her experience. The book is refreshing in that the supervisor does not present himself as perfect, and he does acknowledge mistakes he made in the comments after each set of process notes. There are some criticisms of the book to be made. First, the reviewer was not able to determine the frequency of the patient's sessions or the supervisory sessions. Second, the author's framework is classically Freudian. While this is not a problem, it is important that the reader be aware of the point of view. Third, the author seems ambivalent about the role of the patient's ethnicity and culture in her neurotic stance. These comments aside, Learning process in psychoanalytic supervision is an excellent book, and certainly one any supervisor would want to read. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Attachment in psychotherapy.

Reviews the book, Attachment in psychotherapy by David J. Wallin (see record 2007-05421-000). This intellectual and clinical tour-de-force is what we have been waiting for: a book that is on the one hand a coherent, creative, thoughtful, and remarkably integrated view of contemporary psychoanalysis, with attachment, and attachment processes, at its core, and on the other a reflection on our daily, complex, work with patients. The book has three broad aims: first, to ground the reader in attachment theory and research, second, to broaden the reach of attachment theory by building bridges to other aspects of contemporary psychoanalytic theory and science, and third to apply this broader, deeply psychoanalytic, clinical attachment theory to understanding the dynamics of an individual patient and the dynamics of clinical work. This book should be essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary psychoanalysis. Few writers have the ability to write so directly and clearly about complex science and theory; his scholarship and reach are extraordinary. This book is also a book for therapists at all levels of experience. Throughout every section of the book, Wallin writes about his work with patients, about the therapeutic process, about the therapeutic situation, and about the therapeutic relationship, in all its complexity. In the end, he creates a truly contemporary vision of human development, affect regulation, and relational processes, grounded in the body and in the brain, and in the fundamental relationships that make us who we are, as therapists, as patients, and as human beings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Beyond the reflection: The role of the mirror paradigm in clinical practice.

Reviews the book, Beyond the reflection: The role of the mirror paradigm in clinical practice by Paulina Kernberg, Bernadette Buhl-Nielsen, and Lina Normandin (see record 2007-00911-000). This modestly presented volume overflows with insight and new ways of looking at the mirroring experience for children and adolescents. Kernberg and her collaborators present the rich history of the image, metaphor, and pervasive role of the mirror in human experience; they carefully describe the subjective experience of wonder, admiration, and an objective dimension of truth in the mirror paradigm (2006, p. xv). For the psychotherapist, Kernberg's work provides a rich resource; the review of past and current research and theorizing about the mirroring function of mothers and primary caregivers is thorough and up-to-date with the most recent advances in neuroscience, attachment theory, and infant research. From Freud to Lacan, from Winnicott to Stern, and from Schore to Gergely, Kernberg presents a sweeping exposition of the various images of the mirror. This volume is worthwhile if only for its presentation of this body of recent research. But there is so much more to be found here. While this is not the first time that Kernberg has presented us with her work with mirror observation and interviews (Kernberg, 1984, 1987), this volume integrates the research about early mother- child experience, and the mirroring paradigm in the psychoanalytic theories about child development, with the phenomenology of child and adolescent psychotherapy. The clinician will find a useful application of the theory to clinical practice and diagnosis that is hard to find in the literature. Beebe and Lachmann (2002) have accomplished this integration between infant research and adult treatment, but Kernberg's application of her research and the demonstrated correlation between the findings of mirror experience, attachment histories, and clinical experience is a rare and welcome addition to the literature. There are also valuable links made between the findings around mirror experience and children's trauma histories. This reader came away feeling that a tremendous debt is owed to the authors for helping to ground clinical theory and practice in substantial current research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of A disturbance in the field: Essays in transference-countertransference engagement.

Reviews the book, A disturbance in the field: Essays in transference-countertransference engagement by Steven Cooper (see record 2010-09125-000). At the beginning of this book, Cooper states that he is interested in finding the common ground, clinically, between the relational approach and other schools such as the Kleinian, Freudian, Kohutian, and others. In the introduction, Cooper states he will be examining the moments of transition, change, and newness that occur in psychoanalytic treatment. He alerts us that although he is very interested in countertransference as a clinical tool and the analyst’s imagination as helpful in the therapeutic work, he warns us to not see these elements in any heroic or idealistic manner. Cooper promises to explore the areas of unconscious conflict, fantasy, and the interpersonal process and believes both patient and analyst try to hold these dimensions in mind and communicate with each other throughout the clinical process. Overall, the reviewer enjoyed reading the book but was disappointed in that Cooper’s outline of what the reader can expect does not unfold. What is offered in this book is interesting, and at times illuminating, but overall runs somewhat flat. There were numerous places where Cooper could have taken his discussion points and tried to build a new fusion of relational, Freudian, Kleinian, and Kohutian approaches but he did not. The reviewer found it interesting that his case material seems to be a standard yet very skilled and natural combination of such views, but he does not elaborate on any theoretical matters or examine his case material as being predominantly a combination of such views. Therefore, the reviewer thinks there are many helpful and insightful points made in this book, but he was never really moved in any particular manner by the text. When reading his case material closely, the reviewer was struck by it being solid analytic work that seemed mostly of a Freudian and object relational mode, but again not anything unique or anything showing a new method of consolidating different theoretical approaches, which is what we were promised early on. The reviewer's overall reaction to this new book is that he is very appreciative of many individual chapters, and many sections of certain chapters, but they never all came together as a whole or jelled as a unifying theme that felt new and transformative. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Freud and the Rat Man.

Reviews the book, Freud and the Rat Man by Patrick J. Mahony (1986). Mahony has three general aims in this book. One, his main purpose, is to show how dynamic, transference, and countertransference issues influence Freud's expressive style and are also revealed in the linguistic and para-linguistic characteristics of patient/therapist verbal interactions. His second aim is to demonstrate the inadequacy of much of Strachey's English translation of Freud's writings. The third, and, in the view of this reader, the most interesting theme of the book focuses on the degree of congruence between Freud's process notes and the published case history of the Rat Man. One finds in this book two contradictory stances--on the one hand, there is Mahony the skeptic uncovering inaccuracies in Freud's published case history and raising some critical issues. On the other hand, a good part of the book reflects some of the difficulties that afflict a good deal of psychoanalytic writing--difficulties that, given Mahony's impressive critical abilities, one would have expected him to avoid. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Clinical neuropsychology of intervention.

Reviews the book, Clinical neuropsycbology of intervention by Barbara Uzzell and Yigal Gross. Doctors Uzzell and Gross have performed a great service for the field of Neuropsychology by editing the volume which they entitle Clinical Neuropsychology of Intervention. They have succeeded in making the book a depiction of the state of the art of neuropsychological rehabilitation in 1986. The contributions, of uniformly high quality, are by individuals who are experienced in service delivery to the brain injured. The contributions reflect both an underlying concern with psychological theory and with principles of neuropsychology and reflect an effort by each author to analyze and codify his/her own experience so as to present it systematically to the reader. These efforts are all successful—some to such a degree that those chapters constitute superb, self-contained treatments of their topics. Surely, this coherence of approach and the high quality of the result have to reflect the skillful editing by Doctors Uzzell and Gross. The reviewer recommends this book as obligatory reading for anyone involved in the evaluation or treatment of brain damaged patients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of When theories touch: A historical and theoretical integration of psychoanalytic thought.

Reviews the book, When theories touch: A historical and theoretical integration of psychoanalytic thought by Steven J. Ellman (2010). For anyone interested in studying the evolutionary history of psychoanalytic thinking, Steven Ellman’s When theories touch offers the most complete, most intelligently selected and organized, most instructive text available. Ellman understands very well that psychoanalysts writing about theory are all too often either sectarians or pluralists. Sectarians, by devoting themselves too exclusively to a single angle of view, remain overly limited and mistake the part for the whole. Pluralists, on the other hand, avoid the necessary scientific work of adjudicating among competing truth claims and resolving category errors by positioning various theories in relation to one another. Ellman steers a course nicely between Scylla and Charybdis. By focusing on the points at which theories touch, Ellman, in effect, invites us to hover over the blind men and take a look at the elephant as a whole. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reexamining the psychoanalytic corpse: From scientific psychology to philosophy.

Historically, psychoanalysis has been marginalized as being pseudoscientific, incoherent, incongruent, and unverifiable and, consequently, has been marginalized from mainstream scientific psychology. Recently, Robert F. Bornstein (2001) added to this criticism by predicting the demise of psychoanalysis unless it jumps on the academic-empirical bandwagon. Throughout this article, the author challenges Bornstein's central arguments and attempts to show how philosophically informed approaches to theory and method provide a viable and equally privileged alternative to substantiating psychoanalytic thought. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)