You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Despite its kitschy title, this is a serious work of considerable interest. Ehrenberg has been an active contributor to the literature of the “interpersonal school” of psychoanalysis for about twenty years; in this volume, she has collected and rewritten the most significant of her publications, to form a cohesive thesis concerning optimal technique in the day-to-day performance of our therapeutic task. Much of the text consists of vivid clinical reports, including seemingly verbatim accounts of the analytic dialogue; these vignettes convincingly illustrate Ehrenberg's contentions without burdening the reader with irrelevant details. These accounts show Ehrenberg to be a highly skillful and sensitive clinician, unafraid to disclose her imperfections either to her patients or to potential readers.
Although Ehrenberg's technical recommendations are clearly controversial, in my view she espouses a most effective solution in each instance. Of course, she did not invent the technical measures she is endorsing—among many others, I have also contended for some time1 that successful analysis depends on the appropriate use of a variety of noninterpretive therapeutic modalities based on proper assessment of the analysand's current psychological assets and limitations—but this is probably the first book to present them as a coherent gestalt. The principal components of this assembly of tactical moves might be listed as follows: 1) do not confine attention to verbal associations alone; carefully monitor the affectivity of both participants as well as their other (wordless) activities, particularly in terms of their reactions to each other; 2) give priority to analyst-patient interactions in the here-and-now; 3) take responsibility for devising a tailor-made solution for any obstacle in the way of therapeutic progress; 4) while doing the work, use your subjective reactions as clues about the patient's attitudes within the transference; 5) be alert to the danger of engaging in rep