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The Analyst's Vulnerability is Karen Maroda's fourth book since the publication just over 30 years ago of her first, ground-breaking volume, The Power of Countertransference. In her latest undertaking, Maroda places the humanness of the psychoanalyst at the center of her attention and steps very directly into several of the current controversies in psychoanalytic theory and technique. She reconceptualizes the place of conflict in the psychoanalytic process and scrutinizes several of the assumptions and biases of contemporary relational models.
One of the singular qualities of Maroda's writing (1991, 1999, 2010) has been her ability to write as a psychoanalyst while bridging the too-common gap that has separated much of analytic writing from the broader psychotherapeutic community. Central to her capacity to build these bridges has been her willingness to speak directly to the lived experiences of both analyst/therapist and patient, experiences that are not always so well accounted for in analytic theories. Her first book challenged that long-held belief in analytic authority and abstinence, having from her own experience “felt stalemated, both as patient and therapist, … plagued by feelings of restraint and artificiality” (1991, p. 1). She later described how she felt during her first tentative challenges to psychoanalytic dogma, “I carried out my experiments with sweaty palms and a queasy stomach, but found they paid off when therapeutic impasses were broken” (2010, pp. 2-3). In the preparation for her Psychodynamic Techniques (2010), Maroda had a study group of experienced and inexperienced psychotherapists read and discuss each chapter with her as they were being written. In this latest book, Maroda acknowledges that many of her current patients are themselves psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, and once again, their lived experiences in both personal and professional lives seem to have provided much of the ground for her explorations here.
The Analyst's Vulnerabi