This book presents the theories and observations of each major contributor to the discussion of psychoanalytic technique and reveals the particular advantages and disadvantages which fall to the various theoretical positions and orientations adopted by each contributor.

This systematic and comprehensive volume, written in a lively and clear style, is devoted essentially to the fundamentals of psychoanalytic technique: transference and resistance. The author approaches psychoanalytic technique from a classical theoretical framework, but he frequently gives an entirely fresh view of traditionally accepted procedures. His most important new contribution consists in the clear distinction between the patient's 'real relationship' to the analyst, the 'working alliance', and the transference relationship. His discussion of the contradictory and often conflicting demands which each of these elements makes on the technical skills of the analyst is particularly illuminating. In many fascinating case illustrations, he shows how the analyst carries out therapeutic psychoanalysis while respecting the diversity of psychic constellations in different patients and at different points in their analyses. This book can be recommended - without qualification - to the beginning student because of the thorough clarification and documentation of the basic principles of psychoanalytic technique.

Defining the aims of psychoanalysis was not initially a serious complex problem. However, when Freud began to think of the aim as being one of scientific research, and added the different formulations of aim (for example, that the aim was to make the patient's unconscious conscious) it became an area of tension which affected the subsequent development of psychoanalysis and the resolution of which has profound implications for the future of psychoanalysis. In What Do Psychoanalysts Want? the authors look at the way psychoanalysts have defined analysis both here and in America, from Freud down to the present day. From this basis they set out a theory about aims which is extremely relevant to clinical practice today, discussing the issues from the point of view of the conscious and unconscious processes in the psychoanalyst's mind. Besides presenting a concise history of psychoanalysis, its conflicts and developments, which will be of interest to a wide audience of those interested in analysis, this book makes important points for the clinician interested in researching his or her practice.

In simple, jargon-free language, Herbert Schlesinger sets out to demystify technique, to show how it is based on basic principles that are applicable both to psychoanalysis and to the psychotherapies that derive from it. He has little need for conventional theory; rather, he reframes essential analytic notions - transference, resistance, interpretation, regression, empathy - as processes and assigns technique the goal of promoting the patient's activity within the treatment situation. The aim of the analytic therapist is to restore to the patient active control of his own life. Utilizing basic premises of systems theory, Schlesinger approaches personality and neurosis alike as self-stabilizing systems that can be changed only with persistent effort. Follow-up interpretations that address the patient's responses to previous interpretations are crucial. Similarly, the analyst views the transference as "rules of behavior" the patient has created that limit the freedom of both parties in the treatment. Interpretation speaks to the patient's inability to make full use of the freedom the analytic situation affords to explore how his mind works. Viewing neuroses as what the patient does, rather than what he has, the analyst sees the "resisting" patient not as opposing the treatment but rather doing what the patient feels he must do both to accommodate to the demands of the script of an unconscious fantasy and to provide for his own sense of safety. Beautifully illustrated with clinical vignettes and everyday social experiences, The Texture of Treatment is a lucid and engaging presentation of the principles Schlesinger has taught to successive generations of psychiatric residents, clinical psychology interns, clinical social work students, and psychoanalytic candidates. Taking up elementary matters from an advanced point of view, he has produced a contemporary text whose appeal to seasoned clinicians will be no less that its usefulness to beginning therapists.