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Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Handbook

Editor : Matthias Elzer, Editor : Alf Gerlach

Reviews and Endorsements

‘An excellent and well-presented overview of the complex field of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, this book starts with a clear and general exposé of the psychoanalytic theory of the human mind and of psychic development from birth to old age. This is developed and enlarged in further chapters through the careful description of the conflicts that are caused by the demands of reality, to which every individual has to adapt. The authors clarify and deepen the meaning and role of trauma, defence mechanisms, symptom-formation, as well as dreams in this crucial process. The central body of the volume describes with examples and real accuracy the complexity of the therapeutic encounter. It invites the reader to consider the clinical understanding of psychoanalytic psychotherapy by examining the role of the relationship between patients and therapists, the expectation and aims of treatment, and the importance of the psychoanalytic psychotherapeutic setting. In the chapter on diagnosis and treatment, some ideas shed particularly interesting light, very much from the German perspective, onto the role of first interviews and the idea of considering the non-verbal aspect of communication in the interview as scenic information. The book ends with two chapters, the first dedicated to psychopathology and psychodynamics of neuroses and the other with psychopathology and psychodynamics of psychosomatic disorders, which give this volume both a welcome quality of scholarship and practical down-to-earth appeal. This lucid, detailed and well-written book is the result of years of teaching and will appeal to all the workers in the therapeutic field and many others interested in psychoanalytic therapy.’
— Anne-Marie Sandler