Review of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Practitioner's Guide

Reviews the book, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Practitioner's Guide by Nancy McWilliams (see record 2004-16060-000). Nancy McWilliams' book on analytic therapy is her latest contribution to the training needs of young clinicians. The book is organized into chapters that address fundamental issues clinical trainees typically face as they work with patients. To establish the context for describing psychoanalytic work, the first chapter defines what she means by psychoanalytic therapy. The three chapters that follow address what McWilliams means by a psychoanalytic sensibility: how the therapist may be prepared for doing therapy and how the client may be prepared for the experience of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The next three chapters address the maintenance of boundaries and basic therapy processes. Two case examples follow in chapters eight and nine, and each example is a richly evocative description of the complexity of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The last three chapters of the book deal with the ancillary lessons of psychoanalytic therapy, the occupational hazards and gratifications of the work, and a final chapter on self-care. This is an excellent book, but it should be read together with other texts on psychoanalytic psychotherapy that describe the treatment process systematically in more technical terms. This is a book written for clinicians in training or for experienced clinicians to use in working with clinical trainees. In this sense, Nancy McWilliams has more than achieved her goal of writing a book that will introduce clinical trainees to the psychoanalytic sensibility of doing psychoanalytic psychotherapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).