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After reading this short, emotionally calm, and informative text it is more than clear why Casement is such a popular and respected writer/psychoanalyst. The text is a collection of various talks, perceptive personal interviews, articles, and reflections, many previously published—eighteen chapters in all—written in an informed and engaging style. Casement is famous for his capacity to communicate the essence of therapy, psychoanalysis, and psychoanalytic training without the need for any intellectualized superstructure.
One of Casement's singularly important contributions is his addressing the need of a student, or an analyst, to develop an “internal supervisor,” meaning by that a practitioner's capacity to step back and analyze a clinical impasse or a case, allowing for alternative perspectives. Appreciative of many of D.W. Winnicott's insights, Casement stays with the unique experience of each patient; the dignity and appreciation that an analyst owes each individual patient is his primary concern. He gives many examples of meeting patients where they are at developmentally, rather than assuming a level of integration that they may not be capable of. Casement reiterates very clearly that technique must always be guided by where a patient is developmentally.
In chapter three Casement gives eight short clinical vignettes, and in a few lines he offers alternative insightful perspectives, grounded in a wisdom gained from many decades of practice. As mentioned, Casement conveys his approach by emphasizing the need to recognize the otherness of the patient, the individuality that is the goal of treatment. That is, to understand that patients are not in treatment to confirm his or her preferred theory. It has taken psychoanalysis much too long to recognize this basic fact