Looking for Ground: Countertransference and the Problem of Value in Psychoanalysis: Peter G. M. Carnochan. Hillsdale, NJ/London:  Analytic Press, 2001.  416pp.

While ostensibly about countertransference in psychoanalysis, this book is much more than its title and subtitle suggest. It is a valuable, extensive, and comprehensive exposition of the history, development, theories, and practice of psychoanalysis. Its scope and depth are illuminated by an examination of the philosophical thought overtly expressed or implied in the evolution of psychoanalysis as a theory and as a practical application. Thus, it reflects not only the author's analytic education and experience, but also his emergence into analysis from a basic root and engagement in academic philosophy.

The book is well written and clearly mirrors the author's expert psychoanalytic, as well as his philosophical, groundedness. For the reader who may be less philosophically sophisticated than Carnochan, he provides, most of the time, sufficient side glances at philosophical principles to clarify the underlying issues. The full title immediately reveals that the author does not restrict himself to psychoanalytic theories and considerations, but elaborates on the frame of values that give the analytic enterprise a moral dimension. There is some justification in saying that this book is not primarily about countertransference per se, but the concept of countertransference is used to guide and illustrate the evolutionary development of psychoanalysis as a field of human concern and human knowledge in its widest sense. It is,