Introduction

This book is written primarily for clinicians. Psychoanalysis continues to be under pressure from managed care for shorter, more behavioral, evidence-based, or psycho-pharmacological treatments of psychological symptoms and conditions. Even though there are some recent studies validating the effectiveness of long-term psychotherapy (Shedler, 2010), and the ineffectiveness of medications for many conditions, such as severe depression (Begley, 2010), psychoanalysis is still in danger of being dismissed, both as a theory of human psychology and as a treatment modality. Non-analytic clinicians and theorists offer meaningful criticisms, stating that our theory is too anachronistic and oblivious to advances in the human sciences and that as a treatment modality it is too expensive, too long, and ineffective. Thus, there continues to be the need for an approach that makes the effort to respond to these critiques by providing a reformulation of the dynamic sources of human individuality and identifying the ways that analytic treatment is in fact tailored to address individual uniqueness. In that respect, this book seeks to reclaim, to validate, and to contribute to the further clarification of the essentials of Freud’s insights.