Insight and Interpretation: The Essential Tools of Psychoanalysis

Insight and interpretation are crucial tools of the psychoanalytic process that have been neglected and misunderstood in recent psychoanalytic literature, where the focus has shifted to the effects of countertransference on the relationship between patient and analyst. Roy Schafer brings these tools back to the forefront of psychoanalytic thinking, integrating them with recent contributions on countertransference to create a more cohesive understanding of the psychoanalytic process. These essays will prove invaluable to analysts trying to maintain an articulated and rounded view of what it takes to bring meaning to their patient's lives through the power of insight and beneficial interpretations.

Table of Contents:
Preface -- Insight and Its Vicissitudes -- Introduction to Part I -- Insight into Insight -- Insight for Whom? -- Insight: Seeing or Telling? -- Remembering in the Countertransference -- Intimate Neutrality -- Applications -- Introduction to Part II -- Interpreting Sex -- Psychoanalytic Discourse on Male Nonnormative Sexuality and Perversion -- Gender Jokes/Sexual Politics -- An Overview -- Introduction to Part III -- Knowing Another Person Psychoanalytically

About the Author :
Roy Schafer has sixty years of experience as a psychoanalytic therapist, during which time he has been an active teacher in his own Institutes and a guest lecturer and teacher in many others in the U.S. He has contributed to numerous English language psychoanalytic journals and his books and articles have been translated into several languages. He has held academic positions as Clinical Professor at Yale and Cornell University Medical Schools. He was the first Freud Memorial Professor 1975-76 at University College London. He has received many honours from his colleagues and in 2009 the International Psychoanalytical Association honoured him with its prestigious Scientific Achievement Award.

Review :
'Starting with the basic premises and operations required to develop psychoanalytic insights and interpretation, Roy Schafer presents a systematic and clear account of why insight and interpretation are the essential tools of clinical and applied psychoanalysis. To Schafer, the analyst is the Zen pupil, not the master, but is expert in the use of visual spatial metaphors that give narrative form to the unconscious fantasies at play in the psychoanalytic dialogue. While exploring new conceptualizations of theory and technique, the book's forte is its elaboration of further implications of traditional Freudian and contemporary Kleinian practices. Decades of clinical experience and conceptualization by a psychoanalytic master have given us this fresh and timely book, essential for the experienced psychoanalyst and easily comprehended by those at the beginning of their careers as well.'- Jerome Winer, M.D., Director, Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis; Editor of The Annual of Psychoanalysis'Schafer has an outstanding ability to keep fresh his searching understandings. His rendering and assessment of the intricacies of the alternative lines of thinking available in today's psychoanalytic discourse are also now integral to his work. In this volume there is also a nuanced take on gender and its cultural aspects. As a brilliant up-to-date text on the functions of the mind, and of the analysand and analyst at work - even including their humour - this book is unsurpassable.'- Rosemary Balsam, Training and Supervising Analyst, Western New England Institute'Schafer manages to delicate balance between respect for the breadth of approaches from the varied psychoanalytic schools, and clarity regarding his own personal positions about which conceptual frames and technical stances work best for him...While advocating an attitude of "search" for, and "facilitating" the new and innovative in analytic work with each analysand, Schafer holds rigorously to the tenet that we analysts are significantly influenced by our (self-selected) theories and conceptualizations, and that our work would be impossible without such commitments...Schafer argues that insight itself, while imparted to the analysand, is primarily a necessary tool for the analyst also, in part to indicate to the analysand that the analyst is working on his or her behalf. I highly recommend these essays, the latest contributions of one of the major figures in contemporary psychoanalysis.'- Andrew P. Morrison, M.D.