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Robert Waska is a contemporary Kleinian analyst from San Francisco, California. He is a prolific writer with numerous articles published in a variety of psychoanalytic journals and seven other books in print. Although Waska writes from a Kleinian orientation, he adopts a refreshingly pragmatic position which emphasizes the primacy of the clinical experience over theory. Waska's pragmatic approach is reflected in his choice of clinical examples, which often include patient material which would typically not be considered psychoanalytic in nature. For example, in addition to patients seen multiple times per week on the couch, he intentionally and frequently amplifies his ideas about analytic contact with samples from patients being seen in short-term therapy, patients seen every other week, couples therapy casework, and patients with addictive, behavioural, or characterological issues. Waska utilizes these situations involving less than optimal psychoanalytic conditions to illustrate the clinical robustness of the concept of analytic contact. This approach effectively conveys the power of the analytic methodology for a wider population and Waska's pragmatic position does not detract from the depth of the analytic work presented.
Waska's primary exposition of the concept of analytic contact occupies the first four chapters of the book, although he continues to expand on the concept throughout. By analytic contact he refers to a process in which transference and defence analysis take precedence, self-object relating is examined and interpreted, and an exploration of unconscious phantasy states occurs. He prefers to utilize the term ‘analytic contact’ in place of ‘analytic process’ and describes analytic contact as being inclusive of the principles of psychoanalytic psychotherapy (to include psychoanalysis) but proposes that the idea of analytic contact also includes the experience of a ‘close intimate bond and psychological touching of minds that must be a part of the tr