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Rarely is a psychoanalytic book a page-turner; this one is. What makes this small volume so inviting to the reader? Unlike the familiar psychoanalytic text, this book is immediately personal, not abstract, not at a distance. By the time we have turned the last page, we feel we know Dr. Abassi personally. I think it is because of the author's willingness to share directly with the reader her vulnerability and humanity. The reader is immediately drawn into her analytic life, with her personal conflicts, her imperfections, and her suffering. She steadfastly maintains her consistent attention to the needs of her patient. We are given access to how she resolves, by effective self-analysis, the origins of her countertransferences.
The ruptures of the serenity of her analytic practice are dramatic and profound. Dr. Abassi includes the highly personal intrusions on the serenity of her practice. These include having to share with her patients her problems with infertility and the patients learning she has a transgender child. She vividly describes the impact of 9/11 on her and on several of her patients. She does not shy away from discussing the complexity of a Muslim analyst analyzing a Jewish patient. Furthermore, challenged and puzzled by a patient who insists on bringing a tape recorder to each session, she brings that issue into a lengthy and meaningful analysis of this behavior. Finally, I found particularly challenging what follows after she gives her patient access to her telephone in an apparent emergency. The patient intrudes on her privacy and then confesses it. With these examples, she teaches the reader how to analyze what we usually call “acting out” into the analytic process. Less dramatic, but no less fascinating, are her analyses of her observations of the behaviors of her patients in the waiting room and how she skillfully makes observations that can be talked about and analyzed.
The way Dr. Abassi deals with her patients' often quite sadistic anger at her, t