The single best psychotherapy book

books:

	• Learning from the Patient Casement The Guilford Press, 1992 - 386 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Outstanding!

I am a staff psychiatrist at an academic institution and I purchased this book for use in psychotherapy supervision with psychiatry residents. I am finding it is a great read for residents at all levels; practical for PGY-II's and helps III's and IV's take their therapy to a deeper level. Definitely recommended!

Pas de Deux

In the "pas de deux", the dance between the therapist and the patient, so much goes on it's nearly impossible to get a grip on it all and Casement does a beautiful job of describing this. So much of what he "knows" he knows in retrospect, but such is the stuff of case histories. Meanwhile, when you're together, the dance goes on! What I liked especially about this book is that he makes an attempt to be humble in the presence of his patients; an attempt anyway. If you've ever been in the helping professions, and can get your ego out of the way, that's just the way it is. You get your degree, you read and read, you have your own analysis or whatever, but what comes up in the therapy room never seems to have been covered in the text books. So you learn-as-you-go. His carefully delineated case histories take you step-by-step through the complicated process, and you will learn a lot from this book -- if nothing else you can take heart that it's a very complicated "dance" indeed. You can be taught the steps, but putting it together with your "partner" will be yours alone!

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My 100-word book review

Patrick Casement's honesty in writing this book is an inspiration to those of us aiming to be counsellors. Not many therapists would reveal and discuss their own mistakes and oversights so openly, with a view to helping others learn from them. Casement promotes active listening skills and use of the "internal supervisor" to gain awareness both of the client's and one's own internal processes. Also key to his approach is a willingness to embrace uncertainty and not to make snap judgements, in effect to make use of what the poet John Keats called "negative capability." I highly recommend this book.

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The single best psychotherapy book

This is the single best psychotherapy book I have ever read! It teaches listening skills for things only subtley said. It presents respectful ways of understanding the psychotherapy process. A person who can really learn from the patient will automatically become a wonderful therapist, a person who cannot learn will only be a hack. Read or be a hack.

A must read

If you are an advanced trainee in ANZ or a Chief Resident/Specialist Registrar in US or UK and have any hopes of practising as a psychotherapist or an early career psychiatrist with an interest in dynamic psychotherapy, this is a must read book. Casement, a social worker who later trained as an Analyst, writes easy. The book is not daunting and is understandable.

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reviews: page 1, 2

Throughout Europe, Patrick Casement's work on the interactional aspects of the therapeutic process is well known and highly acclaimed. In Casement's lucid treatise, LEARNING FROM THE PATIENT, everything in psychoanalytic theory and technique is up for questioning and for careful testing in the clinical setting; every concept used is explained and illustrated with clinical examples. The author offers an unusual openness about what really happens in the consulting room, including mistakes--his own as well as others'. The patient's unconscious contribution to analytic work is fully illustrated. As a result of this approach, insight is arrived at with a rare freshness as theory is rediscovered in the consulting room.

In the course of this volume, Casement develops some familiar concepts and evolves a number that are new, such as: internal supervision, a process in which the analyst/therapist explores the implications of various options during each session with the patient; trial identification with the patient, which encourages analysts and therapists to look at themselves as a patient might see them; and communication by impact, a graphic way of considering the various dimensions of projective identification. Others include the dynamics of containment, the communication of hurt, the pain of contrast, and unconscious hope.

In Part I, Casement lays the foundation by establishing the first principles of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy, as well as those for the process of learning from the patient. In Part II, he more fully explores what emerges from this way of working. He discusses the importance of the analytic space and the need to keep it and the analytic process free from interference of any kind, including that of working style or theoretical bias. He makes a strong case for viewing the analytic process as an expression of the unconscious search for what previously was delayed and is now needed for healthy growth and recovery.

Highly accessible, honest, and most of all helpful, this book offers profound insights and is a joy to read. It has much to offer all levels of readership--from students to experienced practitioners--in the disciplines of analysis, psychotherapy, child therapy, clinical psychology, counseling, and social work. It is therefore of interest for anyone in the helping professions and all those concerned with the dynamics of human relationships.

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