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Robert Langs has presented an original and pathbreaking new approach to the supervision of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. First, this is the only book on supervision based on contemporary knowledge about the mind and psychopathology. There is much, much more going on unconsciously in the mind than classical psychoanalysis knew about. The traditional models used for psychoanalytic psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and supervision had a narrow definition of the unconscious, a view restricted for the most part to unconscious sexual and inner impulses and the defenses against them. We now know that higher level mental functions—meaning analysis, perception, judgment, decision making, and other complex cognitive activities—can be carried out unconsciously. Any writings on psychoanalytic psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, or supervision should be based, as this book is based, on a contemporary knowledge of mental functioning.
A second important contribution of this book is its emphasis on the interactional perspective. As Langs indicates, “Supervisory work is always cast in the framework of an active, ever present spiraling conscious and unconscious interaction between patient and therapist…the deep unconscious system is always centered on this interplay and its implications and ramifications” (p. 100). A major defect in the traditional model of supervision, as well as in the classical psychoanalytic theories, is that they are, for the most part, limited to the intrapsychic realm. In contrast, the author includes both intrapsychic and interactional perspectives. Langs emphasizes the necessity for the supervisor constantly to monitor the nature of the interaction between the patient and psychotherapist. Until recently, many psychoanalytically oriented therapists and psychoanalysts had a collective blindspot for interactional factors in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Only in the past two decades, with the advent of the various object relations