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Nathan Field has written an interesting and challenging book for anyone who practises psychotherapy. In many respects what he has to say is not essentially new though it is cogently expressed and arises from the twin sources of his own clinical experience and from the unfolding story of psychoanalysis throughout the century.
He starts his argument from the simple observation made early in his professional life, that there are at times developments in therapeutic work that cannot straightforwardly be explained in rational theoretical terms and which the therapist may not claim to have caused. In doing this he immediately removes the practitioner from a position of supposed objectivity and expertise and places him as an inclusive element in the therapeutic phenomenon. In doing so Field points beyond the medical-scientific frame of the origins of psychoanalysis to its roots in ancient healing and shamanistic traditions associated with religion. From this perspective, psychoanalysis may be seen not so much as a new therapeutic instrument but as a rediscovering and reframing of archaic human knowledge and understanding under the contemporary cloak of scientific rationalism.
Using a broad definition of the concept of breakdown he develops the familiar Jungian view of its teleological aspects and constructs on this his theory of fourth dimensionality. In doing so Field offers a stimulating review and discussion of some of the currents in contemporary science which themselves involve a radical shift away