Routledge The Analytic Attitude

The analytic attitude" ranks as one of Freud's greatest creations. Both the findings of psychoanalysis as a method of investigation and its results as a method of treatment depend on its being consistent to a high degree. Yet Freud offered no concise, complex, generally acceptable formulation of what it is: his ideas, or a version of them, can only be derived from his papers on technique. Taking these ideas as a starting point, and with due regard to the contributions of other analysts over the years, the author rises to the challenge of defining the "ideal" attitude that he come to aspire to in his work as an analyst. To this end the author discusses not only the analyst's empathy, the need to establish an "atmosphere of safety" in relation to the dangers the patient perceives when facing the possibility of insight and personal change, but also the concepts of transference and resistance, and the nature of psychoanalytic interpretation and reconstruction. Review "In this truly excellent and unusual book Schafer shares his wide clinical experience as he unpacks the meaning of the complex concept called therapist neutrality....I am sure that any psychotherapist of whatever persuasion or discipline who reads this book open-mindedly will do better therapy than before."--Merton M. Gill About the Author Roy Schafer