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This book begins with an extensive overview of the author's main thesis: the Psychoaesthetics of depth-oriented treatment. In this introductory chapter Robbins suggests that there are many parallels between aesthetic experiences in art, music, dance, and drama and the psychoanalytic process. In chapter 2, with help from expert contributors in their respective fields, Robbins goes on to further articulate these parallels. Subsequent chapters expand this focus to include further elaborations including fascinating and provocative discussions of “Ego Rhythms,” the “Black Spot” (coauthored by Priscilla Rodgers), the Psychoesthetics of Real and Transference Relationships, and perspectives on spirituality and alternate levels of reality. While one might wonder what place this last chapter has in a basically “psychoanalytic” text, Robbins makes a compelling case for seeing the analytic process as a creative, artistic phenomenon with many parallels to be found in spiritual or “higher” levels of consciousness.
Throughout this text we constandy feel the presence of the author's experience and skill as a gifted clinician. We are offered many pieces of clinical wisdom and insight that have percolated and evolved over many years of intensive involvement with patients and supervisees. Robbins freely shares his insights, thoughts, and personal feelings in a way that is quite refreshing in a predominantly clinical text.
He proposes a method of treatment which demands the most rigorous discipline and dedication from the analyst, including post-training countertransference group experiences which help the analyst to work through countertransference issues which will inevitably emerge as one interacts with clients on primitive levels. Analysts are encouraged to “feel” his patient's inner life struggles and not act them out. Because “images supersede personal experience as they tap into the deeper reservoir of symbols …” (p. xiv) these perceptions, often in the form of visual, aural or ph