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I would certainly recommend this slim but inspired volume to anyone who would like to encounter many of our modern analytic ideas coming from a person who has apparently arrived at them independently, and who presents them in a fresh, charming, and lucid manner.
Havens describes a case where providing a safe environment seemed hopeless: “His was a vehicle so tightly sealed that even the windows were black; I had no idea what to do.” “I was a blind surgeon, a blind umpire, not knowing what was sensitive, what was tough, where he hurt, what he enjoyed. I felt it would have been the easiest thing in the world to drive this man mad or at least drive him away.” The patient had previously been with an analyst (presumably classical). “At the end he had been hospitalized with what he said was psychosis. So silence and neutrality did not constitute a safe place for him.” Havens found a way out, but his task would have been made easier by “contact functioning” and by other modern psychoanalytic techniques.
Many of the ideas (but not the techniques) promulgated by Spot-nitz and his colleagues a generation ago now seem to be appearing in the works of people who are outside the modern analytic school—particularly the need for a safe, ego-syntonic environment. A few