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This book consists of a collection of previously published papers by the author on psychodiagnostics. The group of papers represents Schafer's attempts to apply Freudian psychoanalytic theory to projective test data in a ‘systematic, disciplined, uncompromising way’. In this respect he belongs to the psychodiagnostic tradition of D. Rapaport. Schafer quite justifiably calls attention to the fact that psychoanalysis has been subject to ‘abuses’ of superficialization, eclecticism, distortion, haphazard borrowing, etc., that has introduced confusion and poor practice into clinical psychology and psychodiagnostic work.
His discussion on what he refers to as ‘clinical sensibility’ in his introduction should be on every trainee's reading list, for it pinpoints the essence of the analytical approach to people. ‘Clinical sensibility includes an unobtrusive, empowering recognition of the tragic in life’—a recognition of the tragic in the life of non-patients as well as in the life of the clinician. He elaborates on this ‘sense of the tragic’ by reminding us that psychic development and organization inevitably have painful self-limiting aspects, that conflict and subjective distress per se are not pathology, that every adaptation has its price and leads into new conflict, and that many important experiences are inexpressible, or at best only expressed approximately.
Many of his papers, particularly one dealing with the concept of ‘regression in the service of the ego’, emphasize the synthetic phase of clinical work and a necessity of assessing adaptive potential. Both in a discussion of the analysts' need to oscillate between experiencing and observing (conceptualizing) positions and in his discussion on transference, he refers to intrinsic factors in the transference/counter-transference which enhance the analytical work. His view comes fairly close to Fordham's concept of syntonic counter-transference.
There is an interesting review of the controversy initiated by Eissler at t