Psychic Experience and Problems of Technique

Book excerpt: Harold Stewart, a distinguished psychoanalyst of more than 30 years' experience, began his medical career as a general practitioner. He was drawn first towards hypnotherapy, then to psychoanalysis, as a more sensitive, productive and far-reaching method of exploring patients' problems. In this book Stewart draws deeply on his own clinical experience to focus on changes in the patient's experience of inner space, and to record the growth of his own understanding of the patient's experience and how this can change. Beginning with a vivid account of the role of collusion in the myth of Jocasta and Oedipus, he goes on to a theoretical discussion of thinking, dreams, inner space and the hypnotic state, in the context of extensive clinical experience. The second part of the book centres on practical clinical issues and problems of technique, tackling in particular the role of transference interpretations, other agents of change, and the problems encountered in benign and malignant types of regression. The wealth of clinical material and the author's informality and openness in presenting his experiences of working with very disturbed patients will be of immense practical value to other practitioners. Psychic Experience and Problems of Technique will help psychoanalysts and psychotherapists to understand the nature of clinical problems which are often encountered but seldom acknowledged.