Transforming Lives: Analyst and Patient View the Power of Psychoanalytic Treatment

by Joseph Schachter (Editor), Alan Skolnikoff (Contribution by), Arlene Kramer Richards (Contribution by), Jeffrey Stern (Contribution by), Susan C. Vaughan (Contribution by)

Overview

People's lives can be dramatically transformed by psychoanalysis. Yet the decision to undertake this enterprise can seem so formidable that many deny themselves an extraordinary experience. This book makes that decision - admittedly a complex one - better informed, clearer, and easier. It provides seven detailed case reports, easy to read and free of technical jargon, in which the patients' lives -in their own judgements - were transformed. This is not meant to imply that psychoanalysis always or even usually yields transformative results. These case studies are intriguing in their own right and help the reader think knowledgeably about psychoanalysis and assess its potential as a life-changing enterprise.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780765701183
Publisher:	Aronson, Jason Inc.
Publication date:	05/12/2005
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.56(w) x 9.26(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

Joseph Schachter was trained as a clinical psychologist in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard University, obtained his medical degree from New York University-Bellevue Medical School, and received his psychoanalytic training at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. In mid-career he spent a number of years in full-time physiological/developmental research with infants and children. He subsequently returned to psychoanalytic practice and was a training and supervising analyst at the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Institute. Recently retired, Dr. Schachter now resides in New York City.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 An Early Psychoanalytic Success - Freud's Treatment of the "Rat Man" Chapter 2 George: Transformation Viewed from a Thirty-year Follow-up Chapter 3 Laila: Treatment of a Patient with a Serious Chronic Disease Chapter 4 Watt: A Case of Sexual (Dis-)Orientation Chapter 5 Caroline: "The Same But Forever Changed" Chapter 6 Sarah: "This Aplysia ... makes me sick to my stomach" Chapter 7 Jacob: Climbing Out of the Dungeon Chapter 8 Andrew: Inferiority, Social Anxiety and Submissiveness Chapter 9 Strengthening Analysis, Protecting Patients Chapter 10 Discussion and Conclusion - Seven Analyses

Editorial Reviews

Schachter and his colleagues indeed make a signal contribution to the questions that have beset psychoanalysis throughout its century long history as a treatment for emotional and mental illness: What does analysis do? And how does it do it? What they incorporate into seven detailed chapter-long very lucid accounts of psychoanalyses that have gone well (conducted by seven different analysts), are reviews from most of the analysands of their perceptions of the analytic experience and its mutative impacts. The interplay is most illuminating for its concordances and its critiques-in personal, in professional, and potentially, in research terms.

Robert S. Wallerstein

With the advent, first of pharmacological treatments, and then of such evidence-based approaches as cognitive-behavioral therapy, jargon-free accounts of psychoanalytic treatments have become increasingly rare. This slim volume presents 7 readable, detailed case reports including not only the perspective of 7 analysts in addition to the editor but also the patients' own accounts of the process and its outcome. It should interest both classical analysts and other psychotherapists.

The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease

This unique well-written and well-edited book offers an invaluable peek into the psychoanalyst's consulting room. If you are a practicing or training psychoanalyst or a clinician who is interested in the discipline, this book has a blessed absence of jargon and a rich offering of case material, practical methods, and insight into process. If you are a potential consumer of psychoanalytic services and with questions about your own treatment, you'll find answers here to the questions you're afraid to ask. Fulfilling its promise to open a new vista of detailed case material, including patients writing alongside their analysts about their analyses, this book has something to teach all of us.

Polly Young-Eisendrath

Schachter and his colleagues indeed make a signal contribution to the questions that have beset psychoanalysis throughout its century long history as a treatment for emotional and mental illness: What does analysis do? And how does it do it? What they incorporate into seven detailed chapter-long very lucid accounts of psychoanalyses that have gone well (conducted by seven different analysts), are reviews from most of the analysands of their perceptions of the analytic experience and its mutative impacts. The interplay is most illuminating for its concordances and its critiques-in personal, in professional, and potentially, in research terms.--Robert S. Wallerstein, Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Francisco School of Medicine and Emeritus Training and Supervising Analys

This unique well-written and well-edited book offers an invaluable peek into the psychoanalyst's consulting room. If you are a practicing or training psychoanalyst or a clinician who is interested in the discipline, this book has a blessed absence of jargon and a rich offering of case material, practical methods, and insight into process. If you are a potential consumer of psychoanalytic services and with questions about your own treatment, you'll find answers here to the questions you're afraid to ask. Fulfilling its promise to open a new vista of detailed case material, including patients writing alongside their analysts about their analyses, this book has something to teach all of us.--Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D., Author of Subject to Change and The Resilient Spirit

With the advent, first of pharmacological treatments, and then of such evidence-based approaches as cognitive-behavioral therapy, jargon-free accounts of psychoanalytic treatments have become increasingly rare. This slim volume presents 7 readable, detailed case reports including not only the perspective of 7 analysts in addition to the editor but also the patients' own accounts of the process and its outcome. It should interest both classical analysts and other psychotherapists.--The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease

From the Publisher

With the advent, first of pharmacological treatments, and then of such evidence-based approaches as cognitive-behavioral therapy, jargon-free accounts of psychoanalytic treatments have become increasingly rare. This slim volume presents 7 readable, detailed case reports including not only the perspective of 7 analysts in addition to the editor but also the patients' own accounts of the process and its outcome. It should interest both classical analysts and other psychotherapists.

The Journal Of Nervous and Mental Disease