Winner of the 2009 Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic Scholarship! Irwin Hirsch, author of Coasting in the Countertransference, asserts that countertransference experience always has the potential to be used productively to benefit patients. However, he also observes that it is not unusual for analysts to 'coast' in their countertransferences, and to not use this experience to help treatment progress toward reaching patients' and analysts' stated analytic goals. He believes that it is quite common that analysts who have some conscious awareness of a problematic aspect of countertransference participation, or of a mutual enactment, nevertheless do nothing to change that participation and to use their awareness to move the therapy forward. Instead, analysts may prefer to maintain what has developed into perhaps a mutually comfortable equilibrium in the treatment, possibly rationalizing that the patient is not yet ready to deal with any potential disruption that a more active use of countertransference might precipitate. This 'coasting' is emblematic of what Hirsch believes to be an ever present (and rarely addressed) conflict between analysts’ self-interest and pursuit of comfortable equilibrium, and what may be ideal for patients’ achievement of analytic aims. The acknowledgment of the power of analysts’ self-interest further highlights the contemporary view of a truly two-person psychology conception of psychoanalytic praxis. Analysts’ embrace of their selfish pursuit of comfortable equilibrium reflects both an acknowledgment of the analyst as a flawed other, and a potential willingness to abandon elements of self-interest for the greater good of the therapeutic project.

Forewords by Theodore Jacobs and Donnel Stern The Role of the Patient-Analyst Match in the Process and Outcome of Psychoanalysis is a compilation of Judy Kantrowitz’s previously published papers on the patient-analyst "match" and its effect on the process and outcome of psychoanalysis. The match between patient and analyst places attention on the dynamic effect of interactions of character and conflict of both participants on the process that evolves between them—a spectrum of compatibility and incompatibility that is relevant to the analytic work. Classical psychoanalysis had been viewed as a "one-person" enterprise, with one analyst interchangeable with another. Analysts’ experiences of countertransference reactions were viewed as unresolved conflicts, reasons to return to personal treatment, not inevitable and potentially informative about the current analytic work. This view began to shift in the 1980s, with Judy Kantrowitz’s work contributing to the development of the recognition that psychoanalysis was a "two-person" process. In this collection of her most significant papers, Kantrowitz explores the importance of the match, which refers to observable styles, attitudes and personal characteristics that may be rooted in residual and unanalyzed conflicts, triggered in any patient-analyst pair. Match is neither a predictive nor static concept. Rather it refers to the unfolding transaction that itself that may shift and change during the course of analytic work. Pulling together the history of the shift in theory from the one-person to two-person understanding of the psychoanalytic enterprise, The Role of the Patient-Analyst Match in the Process and Outcome of Psychoanalysis will be of great interest to contemporary psychoanalysts.

People's lives can be dramatically transformed by psychoanalysis. Yet the decision to undertake this enterprise can seem so formidable that many deny themselves an extraordinary experience. This book makes that decision--admittedly a complex one--better informed, clearer, and easier. It provides seven detailed case reports, easy to read and free of technical jargon, in which the patients' lives--in their own judgements--were transformed. This is not meant to imply that psychoanalysis always or even usually yields transformative results. These case studies are intriguing in their own right and help the reader think knowledgeably about psychoanalysis and assess its potential as a life-changing enterprise.

This exemplary introduction to countertransference and transference focuses on three areas in which Freud's classical presentation of these concepts must be expanded: (1) the treatment of difficult character disorders; (2) the conduct of brief psychotherapy; and (3) analytic work by and with women.

Michael Fordham was a friend of Jung, made many major contributions to analytical psychology. This volume brings together his key writings on analytical technique. They are important because they have shaped and informed analytical technique as we find it today. These writings will be welcomed by both trainee and practising analysts.

Coen (training and supervising analyst, Columbia U. Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research) offers advice to psychoanalysts working with extremely difficult patients. His central premise is that both patients and therapists have difficulty tolerating intense affects (such as loving and hating) and that the clinician needs to "feel with and for his patient, over a prolonged time, what she finds so terrifying" (emphasis in original). Also stressed is the need for clinicians to confront their own fears and doubts about treatment. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The question of how psychoanalysts are affected by their patients is of perennial interest. Edward Glover posed the question in an informal survey in 1940, but little came of his efforts. Now, more than half a century later, Judy Kantrowitz rigorously explores this issue on the basis of a unique research project that obtained data from 399 fully trained analysts. These survey responses included 194 reported clinical examples and 26 extended case commentaries on analyst change. Kantrowitz begins The Patient's Impact on the Analyst by documenting how the process of analysis fosters an interactional process out of which patient and analyst alike experience therapeutic effects. Then, drawing on the clinical examples provided by her survey respondents, she offers a detailed exploration of the ways in which clinically triggered self-reflection represents a continuation of the analyst's own personal understanding and growth. Finally, she incorporates these research findings into theoretical reflections on how analysts obtain and integrate self-knowledge in the course of their ongoing clinical work. This book is a pioneering effort to understand the therapeutic process from the perspective of its impact on the analyst. It provides an enlarged framework of comprehension for recent discussions of self-analysis, countertransference, interaction, and mutuality in the analytic process. Combining a wealth of experiential insight with thoughtful commentary and synthesis, it will sharpen analysts' awareness of how they work and how they are affected by their work.