| Abstract: | Reviews the book, Retelling a life: Narration and dialogue in psychoanalysis by Roy Schafer (see record 1992-97655-000). Although most of the chapters in Retelling a life have been printed previously, they have been edited so that the work reads seamlessly, even as it covers an extraordinary range of topics of interest to analysts: self-interest; female psychology; training analysis; theories of the "self; projective identification and enactment; Freud's legacy; the differences between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy; the desirability of talking directly to patients; and the larger issues of metapsychology, epistemology, and narration that give the book its title and backbone. It is always clearly written with useful clinical illustrations so that it may prove accessible to a lay reader looking to sample the work of a sophisticated, contemporary psychoanalyst. For the experienced therapist or analyst, the advantage of reading this book all the way through is that one ends up knowing pretty well how Schafer would approach a particular problem; he becomes a familiar voice in one's mind. Schafer's discussion of "the self" is well worth reading. Summarizing greatly, he thinks we do best to consider one "person" who narrates multiple self narratives. Order is brought to bear by reducing the narrative data to "storylines" so that particular narrations can be recognized as "versions of the same basic story" (e.g., of imprisonment, rebirth, odyssey, or oedipal rivalry). What Schafer is attempting to do--as before in A new language for psychoanalysis (1976)--is to provide a modern, philosophically correct basis for psychoanalytic practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
