The How-To Book for Students of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

by Sheldon Bach

This is a book that grew out of the many practical "how-to" questions that the author's psychotherapy students have asked him over the years. It is neither an evidence-based compendium nor an attempt to summarize general practice or the viewpoints of others, but rather a handbook of practical answers to many of the questions that may puzzle students of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Some of the short chapters include: How to choose a personal psychoanalyst. How to do an initial interview. How to listen to a patient. How to recognize and understand self-states, multiple identities, true and false selves, etc. How to tell what the transference is. How to deal with the sadomasochistic transference. How to understand the need for recognition. How to think about analytic processHow to practice holistic healing. How to refer a patient for medication. How to get paid for your work. How to manage vacations, weekends, illnesses, no-shows and other disturbances of continuity.

Genres: Psychoanalysis, Nonfiction, Psychology

102 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2011

Reviews

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty interesting, though it's a bit unclear to me who it is meant for. People who are really on the point of starting practice as psychoanalysts/therapists surely ought to know this stuff in much more detail. People who are not will need much greater introduction to some of the concepts. Perhaps people like me are the perfect audience! I.e. people who are not about to become therapists but know a fair amount of psychoanalytic theory and are curious about how analysts think about such things as handling an initial interview, getting paid, etc.

I went straight from reading this in the morning - about such things as therapists' "normal aggression" towards patients, and the varieties of their negative counter-transferences - to a therapy session for which the therapist didn't show up! (Turned out to be a mix-up about time.) An interesting experience.

ETA: The above was written having read 50 of the 80 pages of text in this short book. I have now finished it and I have to say that I found it rather moving. Patients in psychoanalytic therapy are likely to feel that their therapist is aloof and elusive because therapists in this kind of therapy withhold so much about themselves. Reading this book, advice to therapists on how to get paid, how to remain physically and psychologically healthy, how to deal with counter-transference, written in this genial way by an experienced analyst, really brings home how despite appearances, one's therapist is living the therapy with just as much affect and involvement as the patient is.

[Odin · Rating 4 out of 5]

باخ تمرکز را از نظریه‌ها به فرایند واقعی درمان منتقل می‌کند: گوش‌دادن تحلیلی، توجه به انتقال و مقاومت، کار با سکوت، زمان‌بندی مداخله و تحمل نادانستن. او نشان می‌دهد که تکنیک روان‌کاوی نه مجموعه‌ای از فنون ثابت، بلکه نوعی موضع ذهنی است که در تعامل زنده با بیمار شکل می‌گیرد.
نکتهٔ مهم کتاب تأکید بر تجربهٔ درونی درمانگر است. باخ بارها به اضطراب، تردید، خیال‌پردازی و واکنش‌های هیجانی تحلیلگر می‌پردازد و آن‌ها را نه مانع، بلکه دادهٔ بالینی می‌داند. از این نظر، کتاب پلی است میان تکنیک کلاسیک و حساسیت‌های معاصر نسبت به ضدانتقال و بیناذهنیت.
این اثر برای دانشجویان و درمانگران در آغاز کار بالینی بسیار مفید است؛ نه به‌عنوان کتاب دستورالعمل ، بلکه به‌عنوان راهنمایی برای شکل‌دادن به ذهن تحلیلی. کتاب مختصر، عملی و عاری از ادعاهای نظری اغراق‌آمیز است و ارزش آن بیشتر در روشن‌کردن پیچیدگی کار واقعی درمان است تا ارائهٔ پاسخ‌های قطعی.

[Jason Comely · Rating 4 out of 5]

Instructive but short. Left me wanting more.

[Hanan AL-Raddadi · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is really surprising what a short book can do to your heart. If I ever teach psychoanalysis, this book would be my gift for all my students.

[Liza]

“There, momentarily, it can seem that two souls have touched in a way that can be remembered and can sustain hope for the rest of one’s life”

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I find funny when I read a book like this is my process in dealing with partisans verses pragmatists. Bach is clearly a partisan for psychoanalysis, and does what partisans do, which is react to the other side, react to the culture and how it disagrees with psychoanalysis and generally sells his ideas. Being a natural contrarian I go through my normal process of struggling not to dismiss his ideas and get over the natural repulsion I feel to someone selling me anything.

But the longer I sat with him, I then started to connect to the places I have become a believer and partisan of a certain idea and disregard ideas to the contrary. I imagine I do this because I believe it will help grow my idea (especially) and often because I believe it will help me believe in the idea more. I somehow convince myself that the other voices don't get as much say. While reading this book, I was brought to thinking about/very distracted by how this happens at work.

But eventually I get to the third part of the process, which generally for me is imaging myself just like the author of the book and seeing him/her as a mentor for how I would approach the world. When this is in a subject that I am not terribly invested in, like reading the biography of Charles Shultz, I imagine myself a comic strip writer and see how I would express all of my attributes and personalities as different characters in my comics, and the process in very enjoyable. When this happens in a subject I am deeply invested in, like psychology or religion, I find myself emotionally falling under the spell of the author and imagining me dropping everything I have experienced and known up to this point to follow their teachings unconditionally. This process is generally not enjoyable and I imagine is the reason I have an initial repulsion to anyone selling me anything and also explains why I am a contrarian. I disagree with you not because I want to but because I am afraid of the cost of agreeing with you.

During this book I thought all these thoughts and it kept me an observational distance which kept my internal world from collapsing again which is nice. I ended up being very inspired to care more about how I work and how I interact in my world, so my experience of this book ended up being great,without dismissing his crazy ideas or totally accepting them either