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This splendid book forms part of a series of short introductions to the Therapy Professions published by Sage. Others include Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry. The book begins dramatically, taking the reader into the middle of a psychoanalytic session, in order to give a direct flavour of the work. This is a brave undertaking as it is always a challenge to be both lucid and yet still convey a sense of the complexity and subtlety of what might happen in an analytic encounter, and the authors carry it off well. Perhaps they also demonstrate in doing so their capacity as analysts to communicate complex ideas vividly. All three authors are practising psychoanalysts, but each comes from a different background, medicine, social sciences and nursing.
From the intimacy of an analytic session the book moves outwards to describe some of the types of patients who might seek this form of help, and to more detailed descriptions of what goes on in clinical psychoanalysis and who it is for, the analyst's role, task and stance. There is a bracing clarity to these introductory statements:
Suffering is part of the human condition - it is as much through losses, conflicts and failures as through success that human beings develop. But for those whose suffering dominates, whose internal conflicts inhibit development and whose failures get repeated, psychoanalysis can modify destructive patterns and offer the possibility of greater freedom to take control. (p. 16)
Definitions of what we believe we are doing are relatively rare in the huge volume of writings about psychoanalysis. They are seldom as clear as Judith Mitrani's description: ‘What we hope to achieve is a state of being with the patient in the present so that he/she can eventually bear to be him/herself with him/herself’ (Mitrani 2001). In an equally clear, unprecious style, the authors prepare the ground with some fundamental definitions (key concepts are featured in bold type throughout the book) using vivid clinical material