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There is a great need in the life of postanalysands for a good book on how to maintain the positive results achieved in a successful analysis. Unfortunately, Life After Psychotherapy is not that book.
The author relies largely on the use of meditation to “teach us how to continue practicing (once treatment has ended) the observing and choosing functions that we learned with such great effort.” If we do not practice these skills, they atrophy (p. ix).
It is true that postanalysands often tend to forget these lessons, and such symptoms as depression, anxiety, sleep disturbances, and low self-esteem may reoccur. Meditation may well clear up these regressions for the doctor and his disciples, but I see nothing in the book to indicate that similar results cannot be attained through the skilled use of such techniques as dream interpretation, free association, and analysis of psychopathology of everyday life. If the analysis was truly successful and the analyst properly introjected, such processes should continue to be a part of the former patient's thinking for life.
The author briefly turns to analytic-style technique by suggesting that, after the former patient practices saying “I do not know what distresses me” over several breath cycles, he or she should write in a notebook whatever comes to mind. Then, over a period of time, “those you are angry at and the reasons why will emerge in your notebook” (p. 56). Probably so, but shouldn't they return anyway after a period of free association?
It is difficult to believe that Davison realizes he is supposed to be writing for psychologically sophisticated readers. Such comments as, “The object is the loved one whom the child depends on for the sustenance that is necessary for life itself” and “Castration means retaliation from the object's jealous mate who does not like the object paying so much attention to the child” (p. 49, n) are indicative of his simplistic style, as is “Depression is anger turned