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At the very outset of this excellent book, Dr. Bugental seizes the attention of the reader with an explicit preamble as to his motives, techniques and theory. The fullness of the analyst as a struggling, conscientious and aware human being is conveyed with a rich feeling for the subtle colorations of his existence. The reader is invited to participate in a unique experience where philosophy and practice, ideas and action, analyst and patient-in-relationship are presented in fruitful detail. In his preface he says, “This book is my attempt to conceptualize what my ‘patients’ are teaching me about what it means to achieve the potential of a human being.” The quotation marks about the word patients clearly reveals his attempt to transcend arbitrary distinctions; “therapist-patient” is a term applicable to both participants in the psychotherapeutic relationship. In a symposium, “Doctor-Patient Relationship in Therapy,” published in The American Journal of Psychoanalysis in 1955, H. Kelman stated, “The therapeutic situation is a constant and continuous, mutually and reciprocally influencing, human situation.”
The qualities of genuine humility and refreshing candor are apparent throughout as Dr. Bugental weaves humanistic and existential philosophical ideas into a sturdy framework in which the psychoanalytic process and relationship can be viewed. Basically the book describes what he does as an existential analytic psychotherapist, and what he thinks about when he is doing it. It is an attempt to provide both a relatively simple general introduction to the existential orientation and a first statement of a more fully developed “metapsychology of the human condition.”
Concerned as he is with the processes of communication, he has deliberately patterned the book in a series of three restatements of increasing fullness and complexity permitting the reader to expand his understanding from firm foundations. In line with his philosophical approach he assumes responsibility for hi