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What is it that draws the experienced therapist to yet another book on psychological therapy? The need for research perhaps, or curiosity about the work of a colleague? For me it has to contain material that will make me think, agree and disagree, and evoke reflections on concepts and ideas that will inform and refresh my own work with patients.
All this is offered to us in abundance in these collected papers and essays by Gertrud Mander. She says herself that there is no connecting theme to her writings over a period of 25 years but I would disagree. The theme is that we are invited to share the thoughts and interests of a generous and erudite writer who is willing to let the reader into the world of the therapist while keeping her totally professional stance at all times.
The collection of papers is divided into two sections - Part 1, ‘Models and Methods’, and Part 2, ‘Clinical and Other Matters’. Gertrud Mander declares herself to be a practitioner, in the main, of once-weekly and short-term therapy. In the first part of the book she gives us essays arguing the benefits of these forms of therapy. I found this part of the book difficult in some ways as it differs from my preferred way of working. However, what Mander does not take into conscious account is that, although she may work short-term and once weekly, her work is based on a foundation of a broad knowledge of psychoanalytic theory and extensive reading of the great thinkers since Freud who have informed our long-term work. In her writing she shares with us her considerable knowledge and references to a broad spectrum of psychoanalytic theory and to literature.
In light of this, my question would be whether the more recent practitioners of short-term work are obliged to have had their own therapy in order to practise, or are required to embark on anything approximate to the studying and research that have gone into the writings in this book.
The first paper begins by introducing Mander's reflections on the imp