Taking the Transference, Reaching Toward Dreams

Clinical Studies in the Intermediate Area

This book reports on clinical work in, and at the boundaries of, the intermediate space between patient and therapist, perhaps the space between reaching toward dreams and taking the transference. Though the clinical work to be described here was influenced quite deeply by the writing of Winnicott primarily and then of Lacan, it is meant to stand for itself as the record of - and a set of stories about - one therapist's experiences and learning. The chapters that follow take up a range of clinical conditions (hopelessness, self-destructiveness, psychosis), clinical phenomena (regression, impasse, trauma), technical issues (interpretation, transference, free association) and related topics (dreams, creativity, the analytic setting). Most of this work took place at the Austen Riggs Center, a small psychiatric hospital in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in which quite troubled patients are offered intensive psychoanalytic psychotherapy in a completely open and voluntary therapeutic community setting.