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Although published a few years ago this book has been rightly brought to the attention of the British Journal of Psychotherapy. It offers an essential guide to those in training, to the less experienced and to all those of us who from time to time need help in thinking through how to deepen our work.
Jane Hall draws on her long experience as a social worker, as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and as a psychoanalyst to present an easily accessible exploration of how to move from superficial concerns and the push to give advice to the underlying unconscious conflict and dynamics of the work. She writes that the book is meant to help ‘the beginning psychoanalyst who recognizes that analysis is the treatment of choice but is confronted by a patient who only wants counselling’ (p. 2). Her central argument is that ‘people often need to wade rather than dive directly into deep water’ (p. 3), and so her book gently and thoughtfully takes us through the processes that enable patients to chose to deepen their treatment as they come to understand and appreciate how it works. This is a serious and respectful approach to the needs and autonomy of the patient, and Hall maintains that the psychotherapist who withstands the patient's pulls and pushes away from exploring the inner life and who maintains the conviction that analytic work is effective in the face of the patient's despair and negativity gains the patient's trust and deepens the work.
Each chapter offers clear useful insights illustrated by clinical examples that demonstrate the range of Hall's experience as clinician, teacher and supervisor. The first chapter sets the stage and explores the ongoing structure of the treatment. A central thesis is the notion of benevolent curiosity - a phrase learned by Hall from her reading of Ella Sharpe's collected papers (indeed the influence of Ella Sharpe is present throughout the book). It is clearly easier to practise benevolent curiosity with some patients rather than others but