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What do you get when you cross a dandelion with a rose? At the hands of a master psychoanalyst like Vamik Volkan, you get an emotionally stimulating and intellectually enriching book. With this intriguing title, Volkan does in this book what has rarely been done: describe the entire course of a psychoanalysis from beginning to end, day by day, over a four year period of time.
Otto Kernberg (1984) commented that rarely does the master analyst reveal his own case material to the apprentice in psychoanalytic training. This is the exact opposite of the model for training in the arts, where the apprentice works closely with the master during the execution of a piece of artwork. The art master openly reveals and instructs the student in his technique for the student to learn and follow. Instead, in psychoanalytic training, Kernberg points out, the master's own cases are cloaked in secrecy because of the privacy of treatment, and only the apprentice presents his cases for discussion in supervision. Volkan's book deliberately removes this mystifying cloak, and he reveals the technical skills, decisions, doubts, and even the errors of the master as the analytic process unfolds. The book contains the patient's communications, which include free associations, dreams, fantasies, imagery, and nonverbal communications. It then describes how these are worked with during the beginning, middle, and termination phases of the analysis. In addition to the patient's productions, the analyst's contributions to the process are included. It explores how Volkan allowed an inadvertant breach in the analytic frame to occur, and how he then dealt with it in treatment. It explores Volkan's own dreaming of the patient, and how he used his subjective countertransference as a tool to enhance the analytic process. Volkan reveals details of his own life as we join him in examining the origins of his countertransference. These are courageous and honest revelations that make this book unique.
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