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“It is my experience that younger colleagues who are learning psychotherapy go through a difficult process in finding an attitude which is natural and at the same time makes possible good handling of analytic technique” (p. 111). In this issue of the Menninger Clinic Monograph Series, Kuiper addresses himself so competently and compassionately to this concern that all psychotherapists of whatever persuasion can profit from his writing.
In one of his two theoretical chapters, Kuiper discusses adaptation and the contributions to its understanding by Aristotle, Freud, Marx and Erikson. He calls a “psychology of understanding” one which gives insight into the motives which guide and determine human experience and behavior. Furthermore he indicates that presumably incomprehensible feelings and behavior must take unconscious motives into account in order to become clear.
The viable and adaptive as well as the pathological and disruptive aspects of guilt feelings are explored in a clinical essay. Genuineness is presented as a deeply-rooted experiencing of one's thoughts and feelings; otherwise the expression of them is unconvincing. The nature of superego and ego ideal development is described most vividly in relation to the development of healthy and pathological kinds of guilt, adaptation and genuineness. In his illustrations of the negative Oedipus complex in men, Dr. Kuiper makes many important distinctions between the manifest and latent aspects of the subject's experience, fantasy and behavior. He shows some of the neurotic motives behind apparently healthy activity in daily life, such as disguised passive homosexuality behind some presumed heterosexuality, and the neurotic wish to be accepted or to excel behind an apparent pleasure in work. This sensitivity and breadth allows for a more effective treatment response.
In the technical essays on psychoanalytic treatment of the neurotic patient, Kuiper elaborates on his view that for optimal adaptation one needs not only l