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In this intriguing and most worthwhile volume, the William Alanson White Institute took material from a course in its Continuing Professional Education Division which involved original thinking of some of its most senior members. Reflecting the differing beliefs and interests of its authors, the various contributions to this small but pithy volume reflect expanding frontiers in psychoanalytic theory and practice. What one can find in common in the approaches of the various authors is a belief in a flexible approach in psychoanalysis tailored to each individual patient and, most importantly, a belief in the positive and productive aspect of his life that the patient brings into treatment.
All the varying analyst-authors pay particular attention to the analyst's own attitudes, behavior, and stance in terms of the working alliance, and see treatment as a joint effort toward “making both participants human.” Earl Witenberg puts matters beautifully in his introduction: “A person is no longer viewed as merely in the grips of his instinctual drive, nor is he merely the result of his social and cultural enviornment. He's seen as a shaper of his environment from early in his life … he's considered to have the potential for growth and development limited only by his biological ‘givens.’“
Marianne Homey Eckhardt, in her “Beliefs and Reflections of a Therapist,” writes a poetical discourse on her “special kind of thinking.” She stresses the individual's uniqueness, and in particular encourages the growth of her patients' capacity to enjoy life with vitality and perceptiveness. She has what appears to be a keenly charismatic treatment approach, stressing the creative and artistic aspects of her patients' experience and describes herself as having an affinity to Arieti's interest in cognition, but is clearly also deeply influenced by existentialism and the issue of finding meaning in life. This issue of the focus on finding meaning and value, in terms of what Kohut might speak of a