Still Practicing

Psychoanalysis in a New Key

by Sandra Buechler

"Still practicing" has several meanings. Still practicing suggests that the balance of heartaches and joys must not deter us from pursuing a clinical practice. At the same time, still practicing suggests that for the clinician "practice" never "makes perfect." We continue to refine our clinical instruments over our entire working lives. Framed by her previous work on the concept of emotional balance, Sandra Buechler investigates how vicissitudes in a clinical career can have a profound and lasting impact on the clinician's emotional balance, and considers how the clinician's resilience is maintained in the face of the personal fallout of a lifetime of clinical practice. At each juncture, from training to early phases of clinical experience, through mid and late career, she asks, what can help us maintain a vital interest in our work? How do we not burn out? Aimed at the nexus of the personal and theoretical, Still Practicing concentrates on the sadness, feelings of shame, and satisfactions inherent in practice, and encourages newcomers and veterans alike to make career choices mindful of their potential long-term impact on their feelings about being therapists. It poses a question vital to the life of the How can we strike a balance between the work's inevitable pain and its potential joy?

230 pages, Paperback

First published April 6, 2012

Reviews

[Harry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books appear in the right place at the right time. I found this profound and personal work while approaching the ten year mark of my career as a psychotherapist (my second career). I know it will serve me in making the most of the ten that follow. I felt many of the challenges and heartaches I have faced in my career articulated in such a clear manner, that I finished my book feeling more understanding and compassionate toward my work and my struggles. This is a book about joy and fulfillment as much as it is a book about shame and sorrow. As I finished, I felt as if I was saying goodbye to someone who for the several weeks of reading had offered me companionship and understanding. To gain resilience, the author reminds us, we must face our losses and our challenges, and find meaning and a sense of purpose deep enough to counteract them.

I would recommend this book widely: to clinical supervisors, to starting and maturing psychotherapists and psychiatrists and to others who feel curious about grasping the human dimensions of the strange and wondrous lives of those who practice the art and science of therapy.

[Gregory Kaplan · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an important topic: how to survive and maybe flourish as a therapist (or more precisely analyst). It took me a long time to read this book. Not because the writing was difficult, it is in fact colloquial and well illustrated. But it was painful in a sense. After all, Buechler writes, “the two emotions that have dominated my thinking in this book are shame and sorrow.” This is a book about loss. Or another way to put the similarities of shame and sorrow: “both implicitly compare what is with what could have been and, in some sense, should have been” (212). It is not all dark and dreary. But it is difficult. The many case studies bring it to life. Buechler also touches on the antidote (or corrective, since really there is no cure) to loss: resiliency, the ability to bounce back, which she believes is generated by Love and Curiosity. The book covers the span of a career and touches on many points from professional settings to patterns of relating.

[Olwen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. So real.