Rethinking clinical technique

122 Pages·1999·1.225 MB·English

by  Busch, Fred

RETHINKING CLINICAL TECHNIQUE
This is a time of great professional and intellectual ferment in the field of psychotherapy.
Barriers between professional groups fortified by decades of elitism and mistrust are
crumbling and there is increasing openness to new ideas. Yet as clinicians talk ever more
candidly about what actually happens in the clinical hour, the chronically fuzzy connection
between theory and technique has become even more uncertain.
How do we think clearly about clinical technique in this new era of fluidity and change?
Fred Busch, directly addressing this issue, offers an approach to clinical technique based on
shared assumptions about what helps people change. With detailed clinical examples, he
shows us when and how to intervene to help increase patients’ autonomy and self-reflective
abilities. His method can be integrated into clinical practice whatever the orientation or level
of experience.
About the Author
Fred Busch, Ph.D., is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Michigan Psychoanalytic
Institute, where he is currently Chair of the Admissions Committee. Formerly a member of the
faculty at the University of Colorado Medical Center, the Departments of Psychology and
Psychiatry at the University of Michigan, and visiting faculty at the Chicago Center for
Psychoanalysis and the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, Dr. Busch is a member of
the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Psychology and Critical Issues in Psychoanalysis. His
most recent book is The Ego at the Center of Clinical Technique.

Jacket design by Judith M. Tulli

This book was set in 12 pt. Galliard.

Copyright © 1999 by Jason Aronson Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Busch, Fred, 1939–
Rethinking clinical technique / Fred Busch.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
9781461710110
1. Psychodynamic psychotherapy. 2. Ego (Psychology) 3. Object relations (Psychoanalysis) 4.
Psychoanalysis. I. Title.
RC489.P72B87 1999
616.89’14—dc21
98-30372

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To Paul Gray and Marvin Margolis

In his own way each has changed the nature of the debates
within psychoanalysis.
Griefs, at the moment they change into ideas, lose some of their power to injure our heart.

—Marcel Proust
Table of Contents
RETHINKING CLINICAL TECHNIQUE
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
1 - Some Current Myths in Psychoanalytic Technique.
2 - A Diminished Role for the Ego
3 - The Expanding Role of the Ego
4 - A Brief History of Ego Psychology
5 - Object Relations and the Structural Model
6 - The Schools of Object Relations
7 - Multiple Causes, Multiple Functions
References
Index