The Analytic Attitude

Brilliant, innovative, original: these words describe the writing of Roy Schafer, one of America’s most distinguished psychoanalysts. For a decade Schafer has been trying to free analysis from the rigid, mechanistic thinking of the nineteenth century. In this book, he moves beyond the much-discussed concepts of action language to explore the narrative structure of the analytic process.Exploring the mind of the analyst at work as it is evidenced in the analyst’s empathy, Schafer stresses the need to establish an “atmosphere of safety” in relation to the dangers the patient perceives when facing the possibility of insight and personal change. In his retelling of the concepts of transference and resistance, Schafer emphasizes what is progressive, affirmative, and new in the experience, along with what has been traditionally emphasized as the regressive, negative, and repetitious. Interpretation and reconstruction of the past, two of the most essential activities of the analytic process, receive original and fascinating treatment as Schafer explores their narrative features and shows how they are used to develop an account of the past and the present that helps to construct a coherent life history and the basis for personal improvement.Throughout, the emphasis is on the analysand as agent or actor, as someone who participates fully, unconsciously as well as consciously, in the construction of symptoms, character makeup, danger situations, conflicts, and repetitions of every kind. This book, bringing together a decade of writing and research, offers the reader a fresh, deeply felt understanding of the analytic process.