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In her Foreword to this important book, Nancy McWilliams describes the ‘distortions’ that have altered the way commissioners, professionals and vast swathes of the public have viewed Psychoanalysis and its offshoots. What was once regarded as Freud’s new ‘science of the mind’ – with its idealised implication of some unfathomable answer or treasured secret at the heart of human existence – has with time been viewed by some as unethical or outdated. At the same time, clearly delineated psychoanalytic concepts like the unconscious or transference have been re-purposed in other therapies with more scientific-sounding terms like ‘core beliefs’ and ‘schema-work’. In a review quoted in the front of this edition, Gwen Adshead writes about this hall-of-mirrors effect of modern academia as a version of ‘deep fakes’. When they are in use in a clinical team discussion, my own experience is that psychoanalytic ideas have real practical value, even as the institutional or educational pressure is often to make these important ideas un-real.
What is most impressive about the Cambridge Guide to Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, then, is the even-handed nature of its explorations. It gives – for a start – a lucid and lived-in introduction to the basic theoretical concepts that underpin the psychodynamic approach. The lead authors write in a clear and warm style, avoiding jargon, and evincing a curiosity and open-mindedness that is a real strength of the book. There is an emphasis on theoretical plurality in these opening chapters, and the ‘different slants’ of dynamic approaches – as Adam Polnay and Rhiannon Pugh so neatly put it in their ‘Outline of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy’ – are taken as if they were different ways to slice the same ‘therapy cake’, rather than mutually exclusive or clinically incompatible methods to understand the same therapy encounter. Different patients and life situations can make us recall or lean on different aspects of our training or experience, rather like a