The Knife and the Butterfly: A Story of a Jungian Analysis (The Karnac Library)

This book is a truly original account of a therapeutic journey. Its unique perspective is the result of recordings which the author’s analyst allowed her to make during the last eight months of their work together. Thus the reader is invited into the previously sacrosanct confines of the analytic consulting room, and encounters the perspective of the patient in parallel with the vision of the analyst, who imparts psychological, theoretical and emotional meaning to the patient’s presenting material.

To the author’s knowledge, no previously published account of a journey through analysis has been able to invite the reader in to the immediacy and intimacy of the analytic relationship which this memoir offers. Verbatim extracts from the recordings give accurate accounts of their shared dialogue, which is not possible in a one-sided account written in hindsight by either the patient or the analyst.

The way in which the theoretical content emerges from this shared dialogue is another unique feature. As a practicing psychotherapist herself by this final period in her analysis, both author and analyst can reflect back on the challenges they faced from a theoretical as well as an emotional perspective. The immediacy of these exchanges adds to the intimate quality of this memoir.