A Clinician’s Guide to Understanding and Using Psychoanalysis in Practice

Book excerpt: This book provides an intimate portrait of a clinician’s psychoanalytic approach to working in the public health sector with people suffering from acute and chronic emotional pain. Drawing on three central psychoanalytic concepts of countertransference, projective identification, and the destructive superego, Paul Terry weaves together a unique and distinctive psychoanalytically-based approach to psychotherapeutic work. He illustrates this approach in detailed, almost moment-by-moment case studies of his work with people suffering from depression, psychosis, dependency, loneliness, dementia, and terminal illness. He also shows how his approach helps him to understand social and political issues of war, the holocaust, entitlement, and sexual identity. For readers unfamiliar with psychoanalytic theory, the book concludes with an appendix in which there is a summary of some Kleinian psychoanalytic concepts and psychoanalytic studies of psychosis. This informative, compelling, and moving book will act as a valuable resource for students training in psychoanalysis and to work in public settings along with career psychologists and mental health professionals seeking to better understand their clients and experiences.