Roy Schafer

A collection of observations by Schafer, who is kind of a philosopher with a lot of clinical experience. His essays discuss the relevance of Heinz Hartmann, conceptualization of clinical facts, postmodern feminist discourse, Freud's "Observations on Transference-Love," Freud's treatment of Elisabeth von R., humiliation and mortification, blocked introjection/blocked incorporation, the concept of enactment, aloneness in the countertranference, authority in the psychoanalytic relationship, and nonnormative sexual practices.

Psychoanalysis is changing. Roy Schafer, a major participant in that change, examines both psychoanalysis and his own ideas in this book. He traces lines of continuity back to Freud and his immediate followers, and describes the major transformations that followed, particularly in the works of Heinz Hartmann and the ego psychologists, Hanna Segal and the contemporary Kleiniens of London, and Schafer himself.… (mehr)

The analytic attitude ranks as one of Freud's greatest creations. Both the findings of psychoanalysis as a method of investigation and its results as a method of treatment depend on its being consistent to a high degree. Yet Freud offered no concise, complex, generally acceptable formulation of what it is: his ideas, or a version of them, can only be derived from his papers on technique. Taking these ideas as a starting point, and with due regard to the contributions of other analysts over the years, Dr. Schafer rises to the challenge of defining the "ideal" attitude that he come to aspire to in his work as an analyst. To this end he discusses not only the analyst's empathy, the need to establish an "atmosphere of safety" in relation to the dangers the patient perceives when facing the possibility of insight and personal change, but also the concepts of transference and resistance, and the nature of psychoanalytic interpretation and reconstruction.

Both original and innovative, Dr. Schafer's book offers the reader a fresh understanding of the analytic process and its narrative structure. It will deepen the foundations of all psychoanalytic work, and, at the same time, help to develop a modern epistemology for psychoanalysis as well as a much needed discipline of comparative psychoanalysis.… (mehr)