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The purpose of Psychoanalysts Talk is to present the idea that a psychoanalyst's personal background, history, and cultural milieu shapes the theoretical viewpoint from which the analyst interprets patient material. The author does this by presenting to 11 recognized psychoanalysts, for analytic interpretation and comment, an analytic session she conducted with a borderline patient.
Furthermore, she presents to the reader each analyst's unique history to explore how close the analyst's background is to their style of clinical interpretation and theoretical formulations.
The content of the book includes insightful interviews with each of the psychoanalytic clinicians with reference to their educational, social, cultural, and even personal experiences. The included 11 analysts are Jacob Arlow, John Bowlby, Rudolf Ekstein, Peter Giovacchini, Arnold Goldberg, Andre Green, Arnold Modell, Hanna Segal, Frances Tustin, Robert Wallerstein, and Ernest Wolf. Through recorded and videotaped personal interviews, Virginia Hunter gives us her actual dialogue with the psychoanalysts so that the reader hears firsthand how the analyst's frame of reference develops. To further clarify and simplify her work, the author includes a chart that codifies the different psychoanalytic theories from each analyst that exemplifies their viewpoint. This synoptic chart includes, for each interviewee: comments relating to the main genetic and dynamic focus, transference, countertransference, dream interpretation, treatment recommendations, and expected audience for the comments.
Virginia Hunter has written an easily readable, yet enlightening book. She allows us to visit and appreciate 11 leading analysts in their own chamber of psychoanalytic insights and touch their unique perspectives. Although her one borderline psychoanalytic patient session is the grist for the gifted analytic mill, it points out the universal role of relativity in understanding human development. The author's work plainly el