This book provides an intimate portrait of a clinician's psychoanalytic
approach to working in the public health sector with people suffering
from acute and chronic emotional pain.
Drawing on three central psychoanalytic concepts of countertransference,
projective identification, and the destructive superego, Paul Terry
weaves together a unique and distinctive psychoanalytically-based
approach to psychotherapeutic work. He illustrates this approach in
detailed, almost moment-by-moment case studies of his work with people
suffering from depression, psychosis, dependency, loneliness, dementia,
and terminal illness. He also shows how his approach helps him to
understand social and political issues of war, the holocaust,
entitlement, and sexual identity. For readers unfamiliar with
psychoanalytic theory, the book concludes with an appendix in which
there is a summary of some Kleinian psychoanalytic concepts and
psychoanalytic studies of psychosis.
This informative, compelling, and moving book will act as a valuable
resource for students training in psychoanalysis and to work in public
settings along with career psychologists and mental health professionals
seeking to better understand their clients and experiences.