Humanizing the Analytic Process: A Review of Clinical Values: Emotions That Guide Psychoanalytic Treatment by Sandra Buechler. Hillsdale, NJ:  The Analytic Press, 1995.  194 pp.

Sandra Buechler addresses the realities of doing treatment in a postmodern age where the rule book has been thrown away and we are all left instead with our “subjectivities.” What, then, guides what we do? Buechler, much impressed with the literature on emotion, uses it to inform her personal experience with patients, and humanize the analytic process. She describes helping patients to be more aware of how events in their lives are related and how listening for and understanding the affect-loading for different events helps make these critical connections. An analyst at the William Alanson White Institute, Buechler credits Sullivan for directing her toward a way of listening that works, and she is inspired by Shakespeare in her focus on the human condition. She divides her book into chapters with tides rarely seen in analytic books. Her empathic orientation toward both members of the analytic dyad creates chapter titles like “Inspiring Hope,” “Kindness in Treatment,” and “Bearing Loss.”

If this sounds a bit sentimental, not to worry. Buechler is a romantic, but is also firmly grounded in reality. She explores the risks, pain, and loneliness of being a psychotherapist in a compelling way, demonstrating a rare combination of melancholy and exuberance. Fitting, perhaps, because so much of what she talks about is finding the right balance in all aspects of the treatment. When should we disclose, when shouldn't we? How do we decide which of many possible lines of inquiry to follow? How do we maintain our integrity? How do we bear the repeated losses when our patients terminate? This volume is filled with good, sound advice for therapists, and would make an excellent textbook.