What is psychoanalysis? Is it relevant to today's mental health crisis?
How can psychoanalysis help people suffering from psychological distress
and illness? This vital new book examines how psychoanalysis has changed
since its inception, and how it has adapted to the needs and concerns of
21st-century mental health professionals and patients.
The first part of this book provides a concise and unbiased account of
the origins of psychoanalysis, and the theories which characterise the
main post-Freudian schools - neo-Freudian, Kleinian, interpersonal,
self-psychological, Lacanian - and the ways in which they agree and
diverge. The second part uses clinical illustrations to examine the
practicalities of psychoanalytic technique in the consulting room -
assessment, free association, dream analysis, transference, and
counter-transference. Whatever their allegiance or role, mental health
professionals - psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, child
mental health professionals, mental health nurses - need to be
conversant with the strengths, relevance, and limitations of the
psychoanalytic approach.
This book provides an indispensable, up-to-date, and accessible account
of psychoanalysis today. Shaped throughout by considering the viewpoint
of an interested 21st-century reader, it is of great interest to
psychoanalysts and related mental health professionals, as well as
students and all those interested in the treatment of mental health.
