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IN CLINICAL VALUES: EMOTIONS THAT GUIDE PSYCHOANALYTIC Treatment, Sandra Buechler vividly and passionately describes the intangible qualities that sustain the complex art of psychoanalysis. Her thought-provoking book is the first volume in a series entitled Psychoanalysis in a New Key. The nine chapters explore values, which are desirable ideals, principles, or qualities that provide vitality and meaning for both the analyst and patient. She utilizes numerous case vignettes, literary examples from Rilke, Shakespeare, and Aristotle, and writings from a diverse range of psychoanalysts including Sullivan, Fromm, Mitchell, and Bollas to describe her pragmatic and flexible approach. By re-establishing the humanistic underpinnings of interpersonal psychoanalysis, Buechler provides direction and hope in navigating the crosscurrents psychoanalysts currently face.
As articulated by Buechler, most clinical theories use jargon and an experience-distant language. Different, evocative words need to be substituted to “make the strange familiar and the familiar strange” (p. 17). She believes that emotion theory is a convincing and meaningful way of capturing the essence of therapy. This perspective assumes that emotions are fundamentally adaptive, informative, and motivating, and are central to our sense of identity. Emotion theory posits that all of our feelings form a complex, dynamic system. A change in one emotion impacts the intensity of
other emotions. No one emotion, not even anxiety, is privileged over another. Emotions are the most powerful modulators of other emotions; indeed, they are more effective in altering other emotions than any cognition, by itself.
Her central thesis is that the values of curiosity, hope, kindness, courage, purpose, maintaining emotional balance, integrity, and the ability to bear loss are the essential ingredients that the analyst utilizes to feel alive and effective, and to sustain the conviction that the process is meaningful: “