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Steven Cooper's new book is a contribution to the growing body of literature attempting to integrate classical theories of the psychoanalytic process and situation with the once-subversive insights of the relational school. Like many contemporary American analysts who are neither wedded to a one-person view of the psychoanalytic situation nor persuaded that a purely interpersonal approach can substitute for an appreciation of conflict, defense, and internal object relations, Cooper writes here in a very personal register about his own struggles to find technical and conceptual approaches both flexible and rigorous enough with which to do effective treatment.
The author notes that relational theory, having arisen primarily as a critique, and whose guiding principles explicitly include “the dialogical nature of psychic meaning and … an ethic of disciplined experimentation” (p. 14), has not provided a systematic theory of technique, something that frustrates learners. Although explicitly eschewing the goal of creating a model, Cooper seeks to provide an overview of his own efforts at integration in a collection of papers that will be of particular interest to those clinicians who, like Cooper himself, find the current language of psychoanalysis to be “still primitive and undeveloped” (p. 2), and are looking for new ways to describe and think about what analysis is.
While Cooper ties together this collection of papers—many of which have been previously published or presented—with the theme of “transitions in clinical work” (p. 1), I think it would be more accurate to characterize the book as an exploration of what is evidently an abiding interest: the nature and uses of the analyst's experience of his work. This exploration leads repeatedly to Cooper's main point: that the psychoanalytic goal of helping the patient to integrate more of himself is a project