War in the Mind: The Case-Book of a Medical Psychologist
- Author:
Charles Berg, M.D.(Lond.j, u.f.M.
Macaulay Press. 8s. 6d.
The practice of psychotherapy depends not only on knowledge. Its success, like that of the surgeon, depends on an experienced and practised technique. It is an artistic as well as a scientific procedure. Its various technical methods, whether analysis, persuasion, sugges- tion, abreaction, free association, and the like depend on qualities of patience and delicacy on the part of the investigator and, equally, on the intelligence, the sincerity and the co-operation of the patient.
For these and other reasons it is probably impossible to report accurately the various nuances, inflections, and implications on which the success of the technique depends. Also, as Freud wrote from his London home in a letter dated May 16th, 1939, which is reproduced as a Foreword, “You will understand that I entertain certain suspicions against the technique of analysts who have made the popularization of analysis their aim. It appears to me a very difficult if not an impossible task.” Yet it should be said that these cases are simply and readably presented. It is further true that there will always be room for the instruction of the student, doctor and patient alike whose endeavour is to discover the rationale and the technical method of the psychoanalytic approach. Indeed out of the welter of experimentation and innovation it may soon be possible to add to the known fundamentals of the method some agreed definition of certain necessary conventions of the psychotherapeutic treatment room. A.B.
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