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“I am who I am, and my analytic work is what it has been. I stand by both” (2). Patrick Casement's deceptively simple introductory words reflect the tone of the autobiographical reflections contained in this volume: forthright, independent-minded, and unapologetic. Those of us who still search to find such a confident voice will be particularly engaged by the ensuing personal disclosures that candidly demonstrate how such states of self-possession can be born of ongoing encounters with our inevitable vulnerabilities, struggles, and uncertainties. Casement relates experiences from his life, often in poignant detail, in order to illustrate how profoundly they have influenced his clinical work and theoretical leanings. While the subjectivity of theoretical orientation is now a widely accepted idea in contemporary psychoanalysis, the risks of personal exposure can still be an unfortunate deterrent to an explicit discussion of how we each arrive at our particular ways of working and thinking.
Casement engages this dilemma in a thoughtful manner, sharing his concerns about how the book (written after his retirement from clinical practice) might “contaminate” the transference and acknowledging the potential for colleagues to engage in “wild analysis” and speculation about him. In taking these risks, he crafts historical bits of himself and his clinical work into a compelling demonstration of the psychoanalytic ideas he promotes. Herein lies the value and underlying thesis of the book. It is one thing merely to discuss the vulnerability that a clinician will need to bear in the course of good analytic work and quite another to show it to us—through the writing of a self-revealing book. As he aptly explains, “All of life can prove to be a resource for our learning” (1).
Why does this matter? According to Casement, the essence of the analytic venture is “learning from” the patient. While he details the complexity of this process elsewhere (Casement 1991),