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.
In our present climate, the belief in the value of psychotherapy needs to be encouraged. Fierman does just that. He transmits a spirit of confidence in our therapeutic activity by telling the stories of 21cases. This spirit was kindled by his contact with Hellmuth Kaiser, and is best conveyed in his own words: “Hellmuth Kaiser taught me that psychotherapists need not regard their work as work but rather, in a sense, as play, an enjoyable encounter with a fellow human being. This is not to ignore … the therapist's full responsibility for the conduct or outcome of psychotherapy, but rather to emphasize the quality of spontaneity, openness and sharing, that characterizes the communicativeintimacy offered by the therapist to the patient in effective psychotherapy” (p. ix). The stories in the book exemplify “the joy and drama” of doing therapy.
Kaiser, originally trained in classical psychoanalysis, broke with the psychoanalytic establishment to develop his own mode of nondirective, interactive, here-and-now focused psychotherapy. Kaiser re-conceptualized the core psychotherapeutic task by replacing the concept of repression and the concept of making-the-unconscious-conscious-through-interpretation with a far more generalized notion that the basic symptom in psychological disorders is duplicity in communication. In therapy this duplicity is not directly challenged, it yields, however, to the direct, genuine, and spontaneous responses of the therapist in the process of the therapeutic interaction. Kaiserian therapists’ sensitivities are trained to detect and reflect on the many manifestations of this duplicity. Their genuine behavior creates an atmosphere of communicative intimacy, which is the potent ingredient of effective psychotherapy. Fierman explains: “The relationship offered by the therapist consists solely of ‘communicative-intimacy’ and his activity consists of freely responding behaviorally and verbally to the patient's verbal and nonverbal behavior. His convict