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Very good ideas often have the peculiar quality of seeming obvious once they are understood, so much so that we must remind ourselves that we did not know them all along. The notion that studying clinical psychoanalysis requires attention to the analyst's aims is just such an idea. In clinical reports, systematic investigations, and even supervision, analysts' intentions are almost always left implicit, as if we all agreed about analytic goals and all that needs discussion is how to achieve them. Once the matter is stated, it becomes clear this cannot be right. The values and theories that inform each analyst's vision of a “good” analysis, the analyst's vision of the aims of analysis, must shape how that analyst proceeds and the extent to which the result is viewed as satisfactory.
Joseph Sandler and Anna Ursula Dreher provide a clear and nonpolemical guide to the shifting goals of analysts. They show how these shifts relate to other changes in psychoanalysis and how these changing goals are reflected in analytic technique. These clarifications invite sharper thinking about analytic goals, confrontation with the impact of our personal goals on analytic work, and greater appreciation of earlier contributions that out of context can be difficult to comprehend. Sandler and Dreher are particularly skillful at appreciating competing viewpoints on their own terms, a notable accomplishment when spanning the wide range of clinical psychoanalysis. Only once or twice in the entire volume does it seem likely that an author whose ideas are presented might have reason to cry foul.
One may invoke some version of neutrality to support the notion that analysts should aim only to “analyze.” But anyone even moderately experienced in hearing and reading case material, or in informal collegial