Publisher's Synopsis
Entering Analysis: 2nd Edition A Comprehensive Primer for Psychoanalytic Clinicians The authors, two experienced psychoanalytic educators and clinicians, have written this brief primer for students entering the field of psychoanalysis. It is an introduction to psychoanalytic education and training, an orientation to core theoretical and technical psychoanalytic concepts that we believe are essential for learning to be a psychoanalyst. With this primer, we hope to begin the cultivation of an analytic mindset, a perspective or attitude to guide a student through the exciting and challenging process of psychoanalytic education and clinical training. We hope to encourage curiosity, open-mindedness, healthy skepticism, and what Keats described as negative capability. This includes the patient tolerance of and appreciation for uncertainty and ambiguity. This book provides an introductory guide, an orienting map of the 'terrain of what lies ahead' in psychoanalytic education and training. It is a conceptual scaffold for what will be taught and learned throughout analytic training for those beginning or considering psychoanalytic or psychotherapy training. It would also be useful for those individuals who want like to know what psychoanalytic education involves, especially the process and experience of learning to be a psychoanalyst. In seventeen concise chapters, the authors provide an overview of what they believe to be the core concepts in theoretical and clinical psychoanalysis. Speaking to the prospective analyst, the authors review the history of theoretical changes that have over time massively influenced the current clinical practice of psychoanalysis. They especially focus on the creation of the analytic clinical situation. That focus includes how today's analysts understand, the influence of unconscious processes that underlies the motivations for patient's behaviors. Patients defend themselves from becoming aware of these motivations. How the analyst understands these defenses is a very important aspect of the analytic process. This requires an immersion in the warp and woof of transference and counter-transference. The authors demonstrate how to recognize what actually happens when a patient experiences a transference phenomenon to the analyst. Using their own clinical experiences, the authors provide examples of how they developed countertransference responses to certain of their patient's transferences to them. How the analyst facilitates this active dialogue is what creates the analytic clinical situation, and how the analyst uses him or herself in the creation of therapeutic action. The authors describe the stages of the student's clinical immersion from the beginning of training to post graduation life. This book is a welcoming into the field, and an introduction to the complex and personal nature of what it means to become a psychoanalyst.
