The principles underlying psychoanalytic technique and their impact on practice are the main objects of this comprehensive and systematic study, which is based on research in psychoanalysis. By taking the differences between psychoanalytic schools and the finding of related disciplines into account, the authors describe new perspectives. After descriptions of the development of psychoanalysis, chapters are devoted to comprehensive accounts of the key concepts of the psychoanalytic therapy – transference, countertransference, and resistance – as well as to the initiation and conduct of treatment, to the role of models, and to the scientific status of psychoanalytic theory. Psychoanalysis, understood in such terms, can be applied to a broad spectrum of mental disorders and psychosomatic illnesses.
»[T]his is one of my favourite psychoanalytic texts, the one to which I would turn for reference but also the one I would turn to because it is written with a clarity, simplicity, and eschewing of ambiguity that is sadly unusual in psychoanalytic writing. If there was a Noah’s Ark for psychoanalysis to preserve the discipline from the flood of brief psychosocial and pharmacological intervention, then Thomä and Kächele have created that refuge. Reading this text is indeed taking a voyage around the psychoanalytic century (and a little more). Its exemplary scholarship and tolerance of what is unknown (without recourse to an idealized unknowable) raise it significantly above the usual psychoanalytic educational fare. But it is its accessibility that accounts for the extraordinary popularity of the previous edition, and it is its democratic spirit and the eschewing of hierarchism that bedevils the profession that I admire most.«
Peter Fonagy
Helmut Thomä, Prof. Dr. med. Dr. med. h.c., has been Chairman of the Department for Psychotherapy of the University of Ulm and Director of the Psychoanalytic Institute in Ulm. Thomä was president of the German Psychoanalytical Association from 1968 to 1972.
Horst Kächele, Prof. Dr. med. Dr. phil., is Professor of Psychoanalysis at the International Psychoanalytic University Berlin. He has been Chairman of the Department for Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy of the University of Ulm.
Translated by Michael Wilson and David Roseveare
Bibliographic support by Regine Lederer (University Library Ulm) and Lisa Malmheden
With an endorsement by Christa Rohde-Dachser and with a foreword by Peter Fonagy
»[T]his is one of my favourite psychoanalytic texts, the one to which I would turn for reference but also the one I would turn to because it is written with a clarity, simplicity, and eschewing of ambiguity that is sadly unusual in psychoanalytic writing. If there was a Noah’s Ark for psychoanalysis to preserve the discipline from the flood of brief psychosocial and pharmacological intervention, then Thomä and Kächele have created that refuge. Reading this text is indeed taking a voyage around the psychoanalytic century (and a little more). Its exemplary scholarship and tolerance of what is unknown (without recourse to an idealized unknowable) raise it significantly above the usual psychoanalytic educational fare. But it is its accessibility that accounts for the extraordinary popularity of the previous edition, and it is its democratic spirit and the eschewing of hierarchism that bedevils the profession that I admire most.«
Peter Fonagy
Helmut Thomä, Prof. Dr. med. Dr. med. h.c., has been Chairman of the Department for Psychotherapy of the University of Ulm and Director of the Psychoanalytic Institute in Ulm. Thomä was president of the German Psychoanalytical Association from 1968 to 1972.
Horst Kächele, Prof. Dr. med. Dr. phil., is Professor of Psychoanalysis at the International Psychoanalytic University Berlin. He has been Chairman of the Department for Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy of the University of Ulm.
Translated by Michael Wilson and David Roseveare
Bibliographic support by Regine Lederer (University Library Ulm) and Lisa Malmheden
With an endorsement by Christa Rohde-Dachser and with a foreword by Peter Fonagy
