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Anyone interested in psychoanalytic history, psychoanalytic gossip, divergent psychoanalytic theories of pathology and treatment techniques, especially for borderline patients, will enjoy this book.
Virginia Hunter, a California psychoanalyst, presents two interviews with each of eleven prominent psychoanalysts representing a variety of points of view (six of these interviews have appeared previously in this journal.) The eleven analysts are Andre Green, Hanna Segal, Frances Tustin, John Bowlby, Ernest Wolf, Peter Giavacchini, Arnold Goldberg, Rudolf Ekstein, Robert Wallerstein, Arnold Modell, and Jacob Arlow, presented in the order in which they were interviewed over a five-year period.
The first interview with each analyst focuses on his or her personal and professional history, including experiences at the training institute, the training analysis, supervision and final theoretical stance. The second interview, which the author calls the Case Discussion, is devoted to talking about the clinical data Dr. Hunter had presented to each analyst in written form from the on-going case of a borderline woman she had been treating in psychoanalysis four times a week on the couch for over nine years. She presented each analyst with process notes from a full analytic hour, including a dream, and parts of another hour five years later in the treatment. This patient had come to analysis expressing a wish to die and a feeling that she did not exist. She complained of severe migraine headaches, was hospitalized twice for brief psychotic episodes during the treatment and frequently threatened suicide. A major trauma in her life had been her mother's bloody attempted suicide when the patient was two years old. Both parents had had breakdowns and she was convinced that her mother wanted her dead.
In the Case Discussion, Hunter asked each analyst how he or she might understand this patient from his or her theoretical point of view and how their theory might be applied in this patient's