You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In the introduction to this important book Dr Peterfreund says that 'What is new in this work … is the attempt to specify, characterize, and articulate what "good" analysts have been doing for a very long time to initiate and foster a process that leads to discovery …' (p. 3). He goes about the task he has set himself with clarity, directness, and a grace of both language and thought.
His primary interest, as that of many psychoanalytic thinkers currently, is in a theory and
methodology of therapeutic process. He includes in this category the patient–therapist interaction, the mode of inquiry used by psychoanalysts, and the activities of the analyst. His predominant focus however, is how the analyst and the patient become partners in a process of discovery, a living process which he designates 'heuristic'. Throughout the book he contrasts a genuine process of discovery, which he considers the essence of psychoanalytic therapy, with a stereotyped approach that imposes preconceived ideas or concepts on the patient's associations, and fails to help the patient vivify and expand those associations.
Peterfreund has chosen to explore one of the most fascinating aspects of our field, and one that has engaged the interests of many eminent thinkers in related fields as well. That is, he is attending to the idea of process as the defining aspect of the creative and therapeutic nature of analysis. What makes his approach particularly interesting is not only the success with which he illustrates and decribes his own ideas, but the way in which his ideas coincide with a main current of twentieth century intellectual thought.
Many avenues of 'modern' science have been concerning themselves with the 'how' of things, eschewing forever even the possibility of knowing the whatness of things. Certainly, such attitudes towards how we work and what we learn are not unique to our era. In another fine book, also interested primarily in 'process', Meredith Skura (1981) opens a chapt