Words That Touch: A Psychoanalyst Learns to Speak

In her attempt to find the words that touch, Danielle Quinodoz gives a succession of illuminating examples to indicate what a psychoanalyst and her patient may experience in the transference relationship during the course of an analysis. On the basis of her clinical experience, the author points out that we all use relatively mature psychic mechanisms and others of a more primitive nature, the former being accessible to symbolism and the latter less so. However, she notes that some can tolerate the awareness of their heterogeneity even if on occasion it causes them pain, while others are rendered so anxious by their lack of inner cohesion that they are afraid of losing their sense of identity. These people particularly need to be touched by words capable of simultaneously evoking fantasies, thoughts, feelings and sensations if they are to be able to unfold their psychic freedom and creativity to the full.The subtitle A Psychoanalyst Learns to Speak reveals an author constantly in search of a language of her own, while at the same time wishing to communicate her experience as a clinician both to other analysts and to anyone who wishes to know more about psychoanalysis.

Table of Contents:
Foreword -- The psychoanalyst of the future: wise enough to dare to be mad at times -- Heterogeneous patients: anxiety at heterogeneity -- A language that touches -- A language that addresses the patient’s “mad part” but does not forget the part that is not mad -- Oedipus in search of integration -- The interpretation of projective identification -- Words already touch in the preliminary interviews -- Touching with words and not with actions -- The words don’t matter provided that they touch -- Fragmenting splits, or The Murderer Lives at Number 21 (Steeman, 1939) -- Words that touch bring time to life -- Listening to Freud and speaking to the psychoanalysts of the future -- A vast internal world

About the Author :
Danielle Quinodoz is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Geneva, and is a Member of the Swiss Psychoanalytical Society and of the International Psychoanalytical Association. She is the author of 'Emotional Vertigo: Between Anxiety and Pleasure'.

Review :
'I am convinced beyond doubt that this is a book that is "a must read" by all clinicians whether psychotherapists or psychoanalysts. The vignettes illustrate clearly psychoanalytic concepts that are usually difficult to grasp and quite useful for teaching purposes.'- Dr Antoine Hani, Director of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, Washington