Master Clinicians on Treating the Regressed Patient

Fourteen essays, with clinical notes, discussing the regressed patient, therapist-patient interaction and emphasizing the therapist's counter-transference experiences. The book considers the psychoanalytic treatment of regressed patients with primitive emotional states. Searles, Ogden and Giovacchini concentrate on various structural deficits and how they become incorporated and affect the treatment interaction. They describe their experiences with patients and demonstrate which ego distortions and primitive psychic mechanisms are operating in transference and counter-transference. Gaddini, Grotstein, Ogden and Tustin discuss the emergent personality and de Paola, Grotstein and Rosenfeld develop the insights provided by Melanie Klein and Bion, while accepting only what is consistent with observable clinical experiences. Special attention is given to the architecture of the personality and Bollas, in particular, demonstrates how his counter-transference discomfort helped him discover the existence of infantile truama and the impact they had on the development process and the structure of the ego.