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This deceptively slim volume is a gem and a generous gift to all those, of whatever persuasion, who seek to practise their craft from a psychodynamic perspective. Beyond that, it is written in such an engaging and lively style, with its terminology clearly defined, as to make it accessible to the lay-person who may be contemplating analysis.
Throughout the book, the author constantly challenges the reader to review and re-revision their thinking about transference/countertransference phenomena: a very considerable and courageous challenge to us all, which made me scan my practice and everything that puzzles me about my work, both in analysis and supervision.
In the ‘Afterword’, Wiener alludes to the ‘mysterious’, a word derived from the ancient Greek muo—‘I am silent’. Reading through this densely packed volume, I kept on thinking about the mystery of transference in all its manifestations, from everyday life to the bewildering projections of our everyday work, which can even make us ill in one way or another.
This tour de force is the distillation of many years of reflective practice. Essentially, it seeks to offer a healing of the wounds and damaging splits within the Jungian community, and between Jungians and psychoanalysts. Borrowing her image of a tapestry, I feel that she has woven a cloth that embraces poetry, music, fable, neuroscience, emergence and attachment theory, cooking and philosophy, Jungian ideas and those from psychoanalysis. Of central importance is her notion of imagination as a mental space and a mental function both within analyst and patient and between the analytic dyad and she sees countertransference as a ‘special form of active imagination’ (p. 57).
There are six clinical vignettes, which include a commentary on Jung's relationship with Sabina Spielrein and James Astor's analysis of the patient ‘K’. In one of these, Wiener explores in depth something that we have all experienced—going to sleep in a session, even if only momentarily. The acco