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It would be easy to dwell on the many problems with this book. While it seems to be addressed to the novice therapist it assumes a great deal of knowledge in the reader. The author uses psychoanalytic terms in idiosyncratic ways. It makes a major point of making a conscious, deliberate effort to arrive at a formulation of patients' psychopathology without acknowledging that this is a process that occurs preconsciously to a greater or lesser extent. His
cases are not actual patients but are composites of patients. His case material deals with brief, early encounters and one does not learn of the impact of his technique on later stages of treatment; thus, there is a hit and run quality to the clinical presentations. He applies the burgeoning neuroscience of perception and memory in detail to case studies while making pro forma caveats that he is hypothesizing.
Still, Brockman comes across as a psychoanalytically trained clinician with a vast experience treating patients who are more disturbed than those most psychoanalysts are accustomed to seeing. He is an independent thinker not tied to Freud nor to any school within psychoanalysis. He is knowledgeable about psychopharmacology and all the patients described in the book, save for one where pregnancy was an issue, received medication. As a consequence, while one would not view Brockman as a trusted and reliable authority, most readers should find this work original, provocative and, at times, mind stretching.
In the final sentences of the book, Brockman observes that it takes time to reach the point where one can be confident of the correctness of an interpretation and the patient will be able to listen and think about what has been said. He acknowledges that this goal is not reached by all treatments. He goes on to say: “The route there begins with data and hypotheses; they provide the bearings. Transference is the vehicle. Affect gives the direction. The formulation is the map” (p. 282).
Accordingly, Brockman stresse