The Healer's Bent: Solitude and Dialogue in the Clinical Encounter

Thematically integrating published and unpublished papers, and containing three chapters of autobiographical reflection, this book aims to make the author's distinct approach to clinical theory and practice available to a broad and receptive readership. This book bridges analytic practice, and other psychotherapeutic modalities. Over the course of a 50-year career, James T. McLaughlin has sought to open the playing field of psychoanalytic exploration by treating unconscious processes as the very material from which we fashion meaningful lives. His unique, iconoclastic perspective, which challenged the conventions of his time and professional milieu, not only engages the creative tension between the stance of the analyst and the stance of the healer, but also contains striking intimations of contemporary relational and interpersonal models of psychoanalytic treatment.