Learning from Our Mistakes: Beyond Dogma in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

This book focuses on the issue of mistakes in psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapy--the inevitability of making them, as far as possible how to avoid them, and what therapists can do to transform potential disasters into a means for growth in themselves as well as the patient. Further developing the creative therapeutic approach first elaborated in his classic Learning from the Patient, distinguished clinician and author Patrick Casement makes a compelling case for being open-minded rather than dogmatic in clinical practice. He shows how analysts can become blind to their own mistakes, and even more significantly, can fail to recognize when their efforts to guide or control the therapeutic process have become a problem for the patient. A wealth of evocative case material is used to illustrate how the process of internal supervision can facilitate heightened awareness of the patient's experience within the clinical encounter. Written with rare candor, this book challenges many traditional assumptions even as it affirms the healing power of psychodynamic work.