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Aisha Abbasi's reflections on external intrusions, including events in the analyst's life, on the therapeutic process represents a valuable contribution to the field of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Abbasi's sensitive exploration of external intrusions, from the waiting room, to machines, to personal events in the analyst's own life, allows the reader to think more fully about the multilayered effects of these events on our own lives as well as on the lives of our patients, and how they may contribute not only to a disruption, but ultimately to the deepening of the treatment.
I am reminded of an endearing quote by Henry Stack Sullivan, the famous interpersonal psychoanalyst, who eloquently stated, “We are all much more simply human than otherwise.” And so it can be said for both the patient and the analyst. As Abbasi notes in the introduction to her book, “This book was written as a life is lived; in bits and pieces, over time, its chaotic colours spilling onto the pages” (p.xv).
Abbasi's writing encourages readers to reflect not only on her therapeutic work, but also on their own. Analysis is a profoundly intense, deeply intimate relationship. Abbasi bravely addresses not only the analysis of her patients but her own analysis. And thus, reading Abbasi's book, I was fondly reminded of my relationship with my own analyst, a cocreated relationship filled with enactments and rich transference and countertransference material.
Despite Abbasi's rigorous and extensive training as a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and a training and supervising analyst, she has an effortless way of revealing herself that is free of jargon and accessible to both the seasoned clinician and/or the curious patient.
Her book engages and successfully bridges the gap between the often disparate worlds of the patient and analyst. Abbasi expresses gratitude for her patients, who bring to us “a gift of communication whatever the form” (p. 65), and emphasizes that our patients often teach