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Darlene Bregman Ehrenberg has, for many years, written stimulating and controversial papers on interpersonal psychoanalysis, focusing on the interactive dimension and mutuality of the analytic encounter, and on the place of self-disclosure of the analyst. This book, based in part on papers published over nearly two decades, establishes her as a leading theorist of the interpersonal school and offers an evenhanded approach to an issue that has been receiving much attention recently.
As the relational model has come into ascendance (with the journals Contemporary Psychoanalysis, of which Ehrenberg is an editor, and Psychoanalytic Dialogues, two of its leading exponents), intense reactions have been stimulated. To what extent is the analysis truly a “mutual” encounter? Is there a valid fear that the analysis will end up focusing on the analyst, for the analyst's own narcissistic gratifications? Is self-disclosure, in fact, an acting out by the analyst? Ehrenberg's voice is one of balance and thought-fulness. She indeed focuses on the interactive moments in the treatment, and largely as these moments indicate resistance, but the long-term goal is always on helping the patient to progress and to engage authentically in treatment.
Ehrenberg does not address diagnosis. Her interest is in the experience of the moment, not in the categorization of pathologies. Her many examples, however, demonstrate that this approach can be used to dislodge powerful character resistances and syntonic, pathological reactions in a way that more traditional, experience-distant techniques cannot as readily accomplish.
Ehrenberg distinguishes between theory of technique and theory of therapeutic action, focusing on the latter. She stresses that every technique can have the effect of furthering or impeding the analysis: silence, for example, can be respectful and engaged, or hurtful and rejecting. Regarding fantasy, free association, and dreams: each can serve growth or resistance. Self-disclosure m