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Playing and becoming in psychoanalysis: Steven H. Cooper, Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon and New York, NY, 2022, 192pp, £29.99 (paperback edition), ISBN: 9781032207551 (pbk) Cooper himself hints at a more measured assessment of I playfulness i when he admits first that "play shows up through transference-countertransference engagement" (86), and second, that "there is no way for play to exist outside transference-countertransference enactment" (57, 102). Cooper elaborates uncritically on Ogden's distinction between epistemological psychoanalysis (Freud, Klein) and ontological psychoanalysis (Winnicott, Bion). [Extracted from the article]

Eekhoff states: Introjective identification is the capacity of the analyst to be at one with him or herself and the evolving experience of the moment with the patient. Judy Eekhoff has provided us with a personal exploration into the difficult and sometimes impossible psychotherapy of patients with primitive mental disorders. I hope to have conveyed my sense that Eekhoff has contributed significantly to the literature on working clinically with severely traumatized patients who use dissociation as a major defence and have a predominance of unrepresented or weakly represented self and object states. Eekhoff's use of black hole is close to Bion and Grotstein, yet, as she rightly points out, the black hole is also felt as safety, a landscape within which the patient can hide and feel protected. [Extracted from the article]

As the author notes, the basic dynamic in the case of Drew Tillotson's patient in Chapter 16 appears to be neurotic, not dissociative-psychotic like the other patients in the book. Neither the patient nor Tillotson seems aware that Crohn's is a hereditary disease, that it is likely that his father died of Crohn's, and that the most likely dynamic is that the patient cannot face the significance of the fact that he has inherited it from his father. Bion ([1], 67) says that "If the patient cannot transform his emotional experiences into alpha-elements, he cannot dream ... the patient who cannot dream cannot go to sleep and cannot wake up.". [Extracted from the article]

While Markman's methods are consistent with some contemporary notions of mutuality and the role of the analyst as a real person, Markman is distinct in his extensive use of self-disclosure. It is this attunement to the emotional state of the analysand, rather than interpretations the analyst does or does not offer, that allows analysands to access hitherto inaccessible parts of themselves by communicating them directly or indirectly to the genuinely open mind of the analyst. Often enough, it is the analysands themselves who alert the analyst to the trouble communicating that has arisen in the treatment, and so the analyst should respond by doing the necessary work to get re-engaged with the analysand. [Extracted from the article]

Dr. Rachman attempts to highlight how both Ferenczi and Severn influenced multiple schools of thought including the Object Relations perspective, Winnicott, and the Middle Group, Self Psychology, Rogerian and Humanistic Client-Centered approaches, as well as the Interpersonal and Relational schools of thought. Dr. Rachman also cites Ferenczi's diary, in which Ferenczi speculates that the mutual analysis eventually devolved into a strategy of avoidance for Severn. Dr Rachman's argument may have been more effectively supported by evidence from Severn's own clinical and theoretical writing, which Dr. Rachman often refers to but does not actively integrate into his argument. [Extracted from the article]

This misleadingly titled book is essentially an extended refutation of the outmoded view of analysis Kantrowitz was taught in the 1960s, that assumed any competent analyst should be able to treat any analysable patient. One patient whose analysis Kantrowitz supervised grew worse if the analyst reacted supportively to the patient's bouts of self-hatred. The role of the patient-analyst match in the process and outcome of psychoanalysis: by Judy Kantrowitz, London and New York, Routledge, 2020, xxviii+342pp., $38.95, ISBN 9780367483500. [Extracted from the article]

The editors, both prominent research psychoanalysts have assembled papers delivered at a 2014 conference in Mexico City that brought together neuroscientists and psychoanalysts for an exchange of ideas about the two fields. Psychoanalysis as conceived by its founder, Sigmund Freud, was both a study of how the mind evolved and functioned and a therapy for those who suffered from some interference in comfortable and presumably healthy functioning. In adopting this belief, they are following the lead of Levine et al. ([4]) who believe that trauma in the pre-verbal period of life registers and is maintained in the body of the traumatized patient and can only be treated successfully if the analyst reconstructs for the patient the unknown (by the patient) traumatic event. [Extracted from the article]

Sullivan became known for his pioneering work on an all-male psychiatric unit, where he took some of the ideas contained in Freudian psychoanalysis and modified them for therapy with schizophrenic patients. All the authors in their own ways struggle with what psychoanalysis has to offer, what is useful to patients, and with pursuing authenticity rather than adherence to a theoretical idea or analytic school. The history of psychoanalysis does not unfold in an orderly fashion and is subject, like all history, to the perspective and biases of the historian. [Extracted from the article]

In fact, Eagle recommends that we drop the term I transference i and focus instead on more operationally specific aspects of patient-therapist interactions. To my mind, there is no one more fluent in and no one better able to clearly articulate comparative analyses of different psychoanalytic orientations than Morris Eagle. In doing so, there is a focus on need - the need for mirroring from the therapist in the mirroring transference and the need to be able to idealize the therapist in the idealizing transference. [Extracted from the article]

In his first chapter, "A Theory for the True Self", Bollas shares Winnicott's humanism by focusing on "an inherited potential that found its expression in spontaneous action" (p. 8), the idiom of the true self. Certainly, many psychoanalysts have been using and exploring creative use of the transference/countertransference matrix, before and after Bollas first published this book. Bollas examines something essential in the psychoanalytic relationship, the analysand's ability to use the psychoanalyst as an object. [Extracted from the article]

If understood, the consultant can help to make sense of the culture of the organisation and the likely deprivations experienced so that staff can be empowered to work in a much freer and more creative way. I Work Matters i showcases Cardona's work as an organisational consultant in a variety of work settings and draws together her many years of thoughts, reflections and insights in the consultative role. Work matters consulting to leaders and organizations in the Tavistock tradition: by Francesca Cardona, London and New York, Routledge, 2020, 126 pp., £24.99 (pb), ISBN: 978-0367-31318-0 Cardona is honest about the difficulties she encounters, about times when the consultancy was not as successful as she might have hoped, and she recognises the successes and limitations of consulting to both individuals and organisations. [Extracted from the article]

Kornblauch's plea of attending to the non-verbal bodily communication from patient to therapist and therapist to patient will sharpen the awareness, the acumen of the sensitive practitioner. Lockdown over the past year has compelled psychotherapists and counsellors to see their patients in closer visual proximity via video links like Zoom, FaceTime or Skype, or in closer aural contact when giving telephone sessions. Bodies and social rhythms - navigating unconscious vulnerability and emotional fluidity: by Steven H. Knoblauch, London and New York, Routledge, 2021, 190 pp., £ 120 (hb), £ 28.99 (pb), £ 26.09 (e-book), ISBN 978-0-367-46685-5. [Extracted from the article]

I do use Bachelard's concepts in processing countertransference, since we encounter our analysands within actual architectural spaces, but there are many more ways of productively processing countertransference using visual images to which Carey alerts us. Carey recognizes the importance of the visual images in Jacobs' ability to process his countertransference to link to his analysand's issues (pp. 47-49). [Extracted from the article]