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Clinical theory, as it pertains to the climate of psychoanalysis and the behaviour of the psychoanalyst, has changed radically in the last twenty years, although pockets of extreme classicism remain. These changes include emphasis on the effect of the real person of the analyst on the process of psychoanalysis, and cure requiring new attitudes and definitions of anonymity, nongratification and neutrality. There have been shifts from the one-person psychology of conflict, projected in the transference, towards a two-person psychology that involves a view of a constant reciprocal and relational interchange between analyst and analysand. Moreover, there is increasing recognition that the analysis of behaviour outside the transference is useful, and that the experience of analysis involves a corrective experience. The author of this volume elaborates these changes in considerable detail with an extensive review of the literature.
He goes further, however, in laying emphasis on action by the patient and analyst. The patient ultimately must engage in the world in a new way to effectuate change and the analyst must facilitate this by encouraging new behaviour in the patient, using techniques ordinarily considered nonanalytic. As he puts it, action in the outside world ultimately is essential, and the failure to take such action may be ‘squandering an opportunity’. It is the experience of self in a different way, through new actions, that contributes significantly to change. The author is less concerned with the traditional boundaries between psychoanalysis and dynamic psychotherapy and emphasises the therapist's involvement, actions and the power of joint enactments. He also emphasises the analyst's authenticity and his willingness to be known, and the inevitability of his being known—in a restricted way, admittedly, but known nonetheless.
An extensive discussion of countertrans-ference illustrates the author's view on the