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In Talking with Patients, Shapiro shows how to balance clinical intuition with techniques based on such contemporary approaches as self psychology, intersubjectivity theory, and control-mastery theory. Through engaging clinical vignettes, he demonstrates how to monitor and evaluate patients' responses as well as clinicians' emotional reactions.
The author's definition of psychoanalysis highlights the impact of the analyst's contributions to the patient's transference reactions. Along with many others who take a relational or intersubjective perspective on the analytic process, he views psychoanalysis as
a therapy based on the systematic investigation of the analyst's contributions to the patient's transference reactions. By systematic investigation, I mean that the analyst looks first at his or her contributions before looking at contributions from past relationships or other current relationships. (p. 31)
The subtitle of this highly practical book (“A Self Psychological View of Creative Interaction and Analytic Discipline”) describes a conflict the author and many others of his generation (including me) had between the rigid rules and discipline of classical analysis and the more intuitive and spontaneous approach advanced by self psychology and contemporary relational approaches.
The first two chapters discuss the differences between the traditional one-person approach and the newer, two-person approach of self psychology and relational theories. Shapiro describes his gradual change from the rule-based strictures of classical psychoanalysis to the more egalitarian and intuitive approaches advanced by contemporary theorists.