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.
Silvano Arieti, in his contribution to the Forward of this book, wrote, “This volume, which Dr. Sheila Klebanow has edited with so much care and fine discrimination, will reaffirm that psychoanalysis is continuing its march toward a deeper understanding of human nature and human growth, of the intricacy of the human conflict and predicament, and toward more rapid and more effective therapeutic procedures.”
It appears we are indeed living in an Age of Change. This is the atmosphere that pervades works from Tom Wolfe to Yale professors who speak of “future shock.” However, the basic tenets of psychoanalysis remain: the quest for honesty, the distorted and real relationships between doctor and patient, resistance, the unconscious. Yet, a great deal has been avoided or unspoken or unwritten in the history of psychoanalysis. This book, covering many areas in psychoanalysis, goes in directions that have been untouched before.
The structure Dr. Klebanow follows produces a sense of evolution and flow, the book being divided into sections on Psychoanalysis as Therapy, Myth and Reality; Evolving Theories and Clinical Applications; Psychoanalysis of the Borderline Patient; Childhood; and Women. In each of these sections, we are treated to a varied number of ideas and clinical experiences. Bellak, Witenberg, and Bieber attempt to take the “hocus pocus” out of psychoanalytic metapsychology and mythology. They succeed well, thanks to their clarity. Bieber, having lived through the psychoanalytic movement and changes in the United States from 1938 to the present, giving a marvellous overview which involves the reader. He brings a great deal of clinical experience to bear in making distinctions between analytic strategy and analytic technique.
In the background, we can hear the possible admonishments about a book like this one from Gedo (1981), who wrote, “Scientific progress in psychoanalysis has generally begun at the level of theoretical abstractions comfortably distant from the cl