Psychoanalytic Failure—Reflections on an Autobiographical Account5

IN FEBRUARY, 1980 I PRESENTED a paper on current trends in psychotherapy research to a congress of German psychologists in West Berlin. Following the talk, the usual circle of questioners gathered. Among them was a young lady who said she had read some of my work on the problem of negative effects in psychotherapy (Hadley and Strupp 1976), (Strupp, Hadley, and Gomes-Schwartz 1977). She added that she had recently published a book relevant to the topic and presented me with a copy. I thanked her and she disappeared into the crowd. Since I left Berlin the same day, there was no opportunity for a further meeting. However, upon returning to America I received a letter from her giving some further details about her analytic experience. In the meantime, I had started to read the book and became fascinated with it. To me, it was a uniquely revealing document of one person's analytic experience. It opened perspectives rarely discussed in the psychoanalytic literature, and I resonated to it in terms of my clinical and research interests. I therefore decided to write this review essay, taking a number of the author's observations as points of departure. The book, presently available only in German, is a human document which has universal implications for all forms of psychotherapeutic practice, especially "classical analysis." Regardless