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Roy Schafer's book is a meaningful read for psychoanalytic therapists for a variety of reasons. Among the most important of these is the opportunity for the reader to look into one man's intellectual journey of development through his career and his continued study of psychoanalytic ideas. Whether or not you see ideas similarly to Schafer (who is very persuasive), it is a model of thoughtfulness that we all might wish to emulate. Another reason for the book's value is Schafer's clinical acumen: he makes the exchange between therapist and patient come to life in a deeply penetrating manner. Not the least of reasons, but especially worth mentioning, is the way he weaves his clinical insights into a complex tapestry that repeatedly demonstrates the necessity of maintaining an open mind to “this and that” and abandoning “either-or.”
I have known about Roy Schafer since I “hatched” as an adult, if I consider “hatching” to be when, while doing my undergraduate senior thesis on color/form incongruity in ink blots (Siipola, 1959), I was first introduced to the psychological testing book Schafer worked on with David Rapaport and Merton Gill (1945-1946). Following college and before graduate school, I worked as a research assistant to Dr. David Shakow, well-known for his research on schizophrenia and his leadership in clinical psychology education. He had formed the first laboratory of psychology at the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH). Psychoanalysis was in its heyday in the United States then, although psychologists were mostly relegated to marginal roles (in that climate) as researchers and not regulars inside the APsaA tent until years later. In and out of our office came the famous in the field and I saw the backs of the heads of many important people. Among them was David Rapaport, who was especially close to David Shakow. When I left NIMH to go to graduate school in clinical psychology, I was soon studying the Rapaport, Gill, and Schafer psychological testing