Review of Psychotherapy Lives Intersecting

Reviews the book, Psychotherapy Lives Intersecting by Louis Breger (see record 2012-05482-000). Breger, a relational psychoanalyst, conducts a long-term follow-up with over 30 of his predominantly former patients. Broadly, he investigates the meaning for his patients of their analytic psychotherapy experiences. Specifically, he asks what helped, what did not, and had the gains they made endured, enhanced, or degraded? Drawing on written descriptions, Breger synthesizes their responses as he examines the fulcrum of psychotherapeutic change. The book is an easy read conversational in tone, illuminating how a seasoned psychotherapist balances self-reflection with engagement of a patient in a dialogal analytic process. In that the research itself exemplifies this commitment in the way it is conducted, the medium becomes the message: psychoanalysis or analytic psychotherapy is at heart the use of oneself. Readers will benefit from Breger’s ruthless authenticity and candor as he clearly demonstrates how analytic psychotherapy is nothing less than a mutual although asymmetrical dialogue with the personhood of the psychotherapist fully implicated in the process and outcome of treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)