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Emotional intensity is integral to effective psychotherapy, but it can be achieved only when both participants feel safe. An atmosphere of safety, however, is not to be presumed. The establishment of that atmosphere and the dangers that threaten it, are the subject matter of A Safe Place by Leston Havens. The book could have been entitled Maintaining Contact a successor to his earlier book, Making Contact. The first volume dealt with the use of language as a technique for engaging patients who feel endangered and removed. This book recognizes that if treatment is to succeed, engagement must be maintained throughout the therapy. The atmosphere of safety—or the therapeutic alliance—is of particular concern in the treatment of people with severe disorders, for whom disruptions resulting from misalliances are common. Havens focuses on working with these difficult patients.
Reading Leston Havens is an opportunity to experience vicariously the excitement and fascination he finds in his work. With his evocative style of writing, his patients emerge as interesting, complicated, and frightened people with whom one can readily empathize. Havens's attention to his own reactions is as careful and attuned as it is to his patients. This attunement to self and other is captured in a description of his first patient, a doctor who was afraid of dying.