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Psychic Experience and Problems of Technique represents an elaboration of a series of clinically based papers that Harold Stewart has written over his more than 30 years of practice as a psychoanalyst. As the title indicates, this work generally focuses on the theme of the patient's psychic experience and how this experience is expressed in the psychoanalytic situation and transformed by the analytic process.
Stewart is a member of the Independent Group of the British Psychoanalytic Society. He was analyzed by one of Michael Balint's analysands, Julius Rowley, and he was directly supervised by Balint himself. Stewart acknowledges being influenced by Balint and Winnicott as well as by Bion. So his theoretical ideas and clinical work are informed by a viewpoint that is in general accord with the Independent Group. Yet his work also reflects his own unique perspective, which he has derived from close attention to those he acknowledges as his “influential” teachers, his patients.
A striking image of Stewart emerges from these papers as a dedicated clinician striving to understand and help disturbed patients. I was continually impressed by his responsive equanimity as he related to his patients in their regressed transference states and by his unflappable faith in the ultimate effectiveness of the analytic process. This book is interesting and informative reading for all therapists who struggle to work analytically with borderline and psychotic patients.
The book is divided into theoretical and technical sections, including papers on changes in inner experience and essays on the issues and problems Stewart has encountered in facilitating psychic change. Consistent with his object relations perspective, Stewart understands changes in patients' inner experience as occurring in