A clear and readable how-to manual for results-oriented psychoanalysis. By now, the term “practical psychoanalysis” has become an oxymoron. The way psychoanalytic treatment is generally conducted is extremely impractical and doesn’t serve the needs of the vast majority of potential patients, who want to achieve maximum relief from emotional distress as quickly as possible. This unfortunate state of affairs is ironic, considering that psychoanalysis became popular on the basis of its therapeutic efficacy. In this essential new book, Owen Renik describes how clinical psychoanalysis can focus on symptom relief and deliver results efficiently. With a humane, direct, and engaging voice, he takes up how to begin treatment, how to end it, and how to deal with the in-between. He offers chapters on the therapy of panic attacks and depersonalization, on how to get out of an impasse, on the relation between sexual desire and power in the analytic relationship, on patients who seem to want to sabotage their treatments, on flying blind as an analyst, and on a number of other intriguing, important practical topics. Renik’s down-to-earth presentation and discussion of clinical anecdotes, combined with useful recommendations for both analyst and patient, amounts to a clear and readable how-to manual. The book is intended for all mental health caregivers, patients and potential patients, and for anyone who is curious about what makes for effective, helpful psychotherapy. --- from the publisher Critical Acclaim: "A brave, brilliant, and lively book that restores the centrality of therapeutic benefit in psychoanalysis. Its structure as a casebook gives the reader the benefit of seeing the analyst and his patients at work together in an array of very practical situations which are, at the same time, of the emotionally deepest kind." -Antonino Ferro, member of the International Psychoanalytical Association and the Italian Psychoanalytical Society "PRACTICAL PSYCHOANALYSIS is an exemplar of what it means to be evidence-based. At every turn, Renik asks, "Is the patient being helped?" Reading PRACTICAL PSYCHOANALYSIS is like meeting with a good consultant, liberating patients and clinicians to look at their work with fresh eyes." - Kimberlyn Leary, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School "From the first page we know ourselves to be in a workshop, not a temple. His matter-of-factness is breathtaking: what's useful is what's important, what's not need not detain us. . . . True believers are to be warned: they may never be the same again." - Allen Wheelis, author of HOW PEOPLE CHANGE and THE WAY WE ARE "Renik is an outstanding clinician and theorist who has redefined the two-person, therapeutic perspective. His 'one-of-a-kind' book presents clinical examples of the diversity of patient-analyst interactions, providing dazzling descriptions of clinical cases, each of which depicts turning points in the therapy. His book is original, therapeutically enlightening, and will, I believe, broaden the perspective of its readers." - Ethel Spector Person, M.D., Training and Supervising Analyst, Columbia University Psychoanalytic Center for Training and Research, Coeditor of THE APPI TEXTBOOK OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
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