The question of how psychoanalysts are affected by their patients is of perennial interest. Edward Glover posed the question in an informal survey in 1940, but little came of his efforts. Now, more than half a century later, Judy Kantrowitz rigorously explores this issue on the basis of a unique research project that obtained data from 399 fully trained analysts. These survey responses included 194 reported clinical examples and 26 extended case commentaries on analyst change. Kantrowitz begins _The (...) Patient's Impact on the Analyst_ by documenting how the process of analysis fosters an interactional process out of which patient and analyst alike experience therapeutic effects. Then, drawing on the clinical examples provided by her survey respondents, she offers a detailed exploration of the ways in which clinically triggered self-reflection represents a continuation of the analyst's own personal understanding and growth. Finally, she incorporates these research findings into theoretical reflections on how analysts obtain and integrate self-knowledge in the course of their ongoing clinical work. This book is a pioneering effort to understand the therapeutic process from the perspective of its impact on the analyst. It provides an enlarged framework of comprehension for recent discussions of self-analysis, countertransference, interaction, and mutuality in the analytic process. Combining a wealth of experiential insight with thoughtful commentary and synthesis, it will sharpen analysts' awareness of how they work and how they are affected by their work. (shrink)

The question of how psychoanalysts are affected by their patients is of perennial interest. Edward Glover posed the question in an informal survey in 1940, but little came of his efforts. Now, more than half a century later, Judy Kantrowitz rigorously explores this issue on the basis of a unique research project that obtained data from 399 fully trained analysts. These survey responses included 194 reported clinical examples and 26 extended case commentaries on analyst change. Kantrowitz begins _The (...) Patient's Impact on the Analyst_ by documenting how the process of analysis fosters an interactional process out of which patient and analyst alike experience therapeutic effects. Then, drawing on the clinical examples provided by her survey respondents, she offers a detailed exploration of the ways in which clinically triggered self-reflection represents a continuation of the analyst's own personal understanding and growth. Finally, she incorporates these research findings into theoretical reflections on how analysts obtain and integrate self-knowledge in the course of their ongoing clinical work. This book is a pioneering effort to understand the therapeutic process from the perspective of its impact on the analyst. It provides an enlarged framework of comprehension for recent discussions of self-analysis, countertransference, interaction, and mutuality in the analytic process. Combining a wealth of experiential insight with thoughtful commentary and synthesis, it will sharpen analysts' awareness of how they work and how they are affected by their work. (shrink)

I believe that in the indeterminacy of drawing, the contingent way that images arrive in the work, lies some kind of model of how we live our lives. The activity of drawing is a way of trying to understand who we are or how we operate in the world.Hands play with torn scraps of paper.1 Somehow they come together to form a horse. As the thick fingers keep moving, shifting bits and pieces around, the horse is momentarily lost but reappears, (...) again and again. We see its mane, then a leg, a tail. "I am not me, the horse is not mine," the artist tells us. It doesn't matter. We are made to find meaning in what we see. Now almost all the bits of paper are gone, only a few shards remain. We still see a horse. We can't help .. (shrink)