You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Occupational therapy is, in essence, about doing and psychoanalysis is, in essence, about talking: so what happens when some concepts and practices from psychoanalysis are brought into relationship with the work of occupational therapists? Well, some of the answers are to be found in this pioneering book by four women who between them represent psychoanalytically informed occupational therapy across four very different countries: South Africa, Italy, the USA and the UK. The book aims to make links not only between psychoanalysis and occupational therapy but between the inner and outer worlds of patients, practitioners and organisations.
The book is divided into three sections: the first is entitled ‘Psychoanalytic Theory Interwoven with Occupational Therapy’ and considers the therapeutic use of the self and maps out key concepts from psychoanalysis drawing especially from Freud, Klein, Bion, Winnicott, Bowlby and Searles. It also includes a chapter tracing the history of influential ideas from the 1950s and 1960s when an American occupational therapist, Gail S. Fidler and her psychoanalyst husband, Jay W. Fidler theorised occupational therapy practice in mental health from a psychoanalytic perspective producing seminal texts for the profession. The chapter attempts to reinstate some of the thinking from this earlier period updated with more recent analytic ideas, particularly to do with object relations and the centrality of emotions in psychic life. The outstanding aspect of all the chapters is, however, not so much the outlining of key concepts and how they might be used, but the beautifully crafted clinical vignettes which bring the book to life and are woven into all of the chapters throughout the book, to my mind holding together otherwise disparate themes.
The second section ‘Psychoanalytic Occupational Therapy: A Relational Model and Illuminating Theory in Clinical Practice’ gives us an explanation of the model which unites the writers and is pivotal to the boo