The Power of Countertransference: Innovations in Analytic Technique (Wiley Series in Psychotherapy and Counselling)

By Karen J. Maroda

Book Overview

The author advocates a change in basic psychoanalytic technique in order to enhance the psychoanalytic method. Expands the key elements of transference and resistance to acknowledge that these phenomena are expressed not only by patientsbut also by their therapists. Thus, psychoanalytic treatment is viewed as mutual and interpersonal, and the emotional responses of the therapist are viewed as an integral part of the process rather than something to be stifled, overcome or analyzed away.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471926264
• ISBN13: 9780471926269
• Release Date: August 1991
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 196 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.6" x 6.1"

Customer Reviews

Essential info for therapists and interested others

Maroda is a psychoanalyst and much of what she writes relates specifically to that form of doing therapy. However, what she has to say is far too important to anyone doing therapy for this to be a deterrent to reading the book. Her thesis is that the real healing in therapy comes through the relationship between the therapist and client and that this relationship should be one between equals. She advocates that therapists respond openly to client questions, avoiding the traditional authoritarian, I-know-what's good-for-you stance that may have been (but probably wasn't)appropriate in Freud's time and culture but isn't today. As a client and therapist, I found this book inspiring.