Review of Turning points in dynamic psychotherapy: Initial assessment, boundaries, money, disruptions and suicidal cases and The damaged core: Origins, dynamics, manifestations and treatment.

Reviews the books, Turning points in dynamic psychotherapy: Initial assessment, boundaries, money, disruptions and suicidal cases by Salman Akhtar (2009) and The damaged core: Origins, dynamics, manifestations and treatment by Salman Akhtar (2009). With these books, the author provides fresh perspectives on classic Freudian concepts and presents more modern structures with a contemporary view. In Turning points in dynamic psychotherapy Akhtar provides five situations that are inevitable in the clinical process. They are initial assessment, boundaries, money, disruption, and suicidal crises. While covering topics of ground rules, the structure of the session, and logistics within it, Akhtar simultaneously sets an interpersonal tone in his writing that seems to be parallel to the kind of interpersonal feel one would expect in the room with him. Therapeutically, tone is as important as theory. We will all do well to learn from Akhtar’s style of communication. In the second book of the volume The damaged core, Akhtar discusses a more disturbed patient. Disruptions and their repair are often the the focus of day-to-day clinical work. It is the disruptions within the dyad, not external reality reasons for disruption, that Akhtar focuses on in this volume. There is much to commend and recommend about Turning points in dynamic psychotherapy and The damaged core. Taken together, these two volumes could provide the basis for an involving seminar on the developmental etiology of relatively severe psychopathology as well as the challenges of treatment of these patients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)