What does one do when a dangerous paedophile, nearly six feet seven
inches in height, threatens to kill you? How does one manage when a
brain-damaged, psychotic patient spits on the office floor two hundred
times during the first consultation? And what does one say when one
member of a warring couple reveals the most horrific acts of sexual
cruelty?
In perhaps his most gripping book to date, Professor Brett Kahr offers
colleagues a detailed glimpse into the challenge of working with highly
distressed and disturbing individuals in long-term psychotherapy. Kahr
explains the ways in which such deeply troubled people hurl "bombs" into
the consulting room, leaving considerable "psychological shrapnel" in
their wake.
The book contains five sensitively and compellingly written clinical
chapters, followed by several historical chapters which explore the ways
in which Donald Winnicott attempted to manage the bombs in his
consulting room, often of his own making. Kahr then examines the
pioneering contribution of Enid Eichholz (later Enid Balint) who, during
the Second World War, created marital psychoanalysis as a means of
dealing with couples ravaged by actual wartime bombs. The book concludes
with an historico-clinical chapter on how thoughtful and sophisticated
classical interpretation can reduce the impact of clinical bombs. Kahr
even provides us with an examination of his favourite "top ten"
interpretations in the history of psychoanalysis!
A unique and helpful volume, written by a practitioner steeped equally
in psychoanalysis and history, Bombs in the Consulting Room: Surviving
Psychological Shrapnel will be essential reading for anyone who has
ever felt frightened while treating patients.
