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Transforming Lives is a small book of timely value. In the current atmosphere of challenge to the viability of psychoanalysis (let alone its efficacy), even anecdotal evidence that this “formidable therapy” is a worthwhile enterprise is encouraging. Schachter recognizes that psychoanalysis is vulnerable to criticism because its effectiveness has yet to be empirically established. However, he, like numerous analysts worldwide, has seen “people's lives transformed by psychoanalysis.” Our profession now, belatedly, also acknowledges the pressing need for evidence-based support for psychoanalysis as a select but valuable treatment. On many fronts, psychoanalysts are engaging in empirical outcome research, but because of the multiple methodological and financial obstacles, there is inevitably a time gap. Transforming Lives provides a footbridge between the criticism of psychotherapy studies that are often self-serving and the anticipated results of the multi-centred, interdisciplinary research that is now underway.
Schachter, as editor, has selected seven heterogeneous contributors: male and female training and non-training analysts, Americans and Europeans, heterosexuals and homosexuals. These are all analysts whose work he considers of such quality that he would confidently refer patients to them. The contributors were asked to provide a detailed case report in which a patient's life—in the analyst's judgment—was positively transformed. The goal was to present, without jargon, accessible examples of psychoanalytic encounters in order to give readers the opportunity to decide whether the experience of analysis accounted for the changes in these patients' lives.
The case histories provide grassroots data that describe what goes on within the analytic dyad, not only from the analyst's viewpoint but also from the perspective of the analysand. It is here that Schachter confronts the confidentiality dilemma inherent to writing case histories. The analysts' names and their prof