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Owen Renik has apparently written this brief book for psychoanalytically informed psychotherapists who are dynamically oriented but not formally trained in psychoanalysis and for patients who are currently in, or might be considering seeking, dynamically oriented treatment. Owen Renik is one of America's best known psychoanalysts. He is a training and supervising analyst at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, has been chair of the Program Committee and secretary of the Board on Professional Standards of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and was editor of Psychoanalytic Quarterly. His bibliography lists more than eighty publications on a variety of psychoanalytic topics. Perhaps he is best known for his series of papers on self-disclosure by the analyst in the analytic situation. Just recently, the New York Times prominently called attention to Renik's ideas in an article considering this book and consisting of an extended interview with the author (Carey 2006).
In this volume, he offers his opinion that analysts have grown too enamored with helping their patients seek insight and have lost their focus, more congruent with their patients' needs, toward seeking to achieve therapeutic benefit. This leads, he claims, to inefficiency and excessively long treatments. Therapeutic benefit is defined as relief of symptoms, and symptoms are whatever the patient feels is psychologically distressing. Perhaps this is so; or maybe not. His book is rich in clinical examples. His style is to make a bold and somewhat categorical assertion and then modify it with additional discussion and anecdotes to make it more nuanced. By this rhetorical device he grabs the reader's attention, raises anxiety and opposition, and in many instances, I believe, ultimately gains a consensus with the thoughtful reader. The reader is compelled to reconsider his or her own clinical experience, technique, and theoretical assumptions. Renik's entire oeuvre is characterized by this expository