Feeling Matters

* Exploration of how the psychotherapeutic action of allowing feelings to freely unfold helps the patient

Psychotherapy is based on the premise that feelings matter.

Michael Eigen explores feelings as they are experienced in psychoanalytic sessions. One patient fears her feelings, another experiences his world through the lens of “killer words”, for another delusional thinking in the present is maintained by delusional ideas about his past, and yet another feels the profound impact of world events.

As these and other therapeutic cases unfold, complex, painful, deadening, and rejected feelings are revealed and we see what happens when the therapist and patient give these feelings time, space, and attention.

As Eigen writes: “A positive contribution therapy makes is to give people time. Yes, therapist and patient rush past each other or over each other, as is common in daily life. But an overall aim in therapy is to make time for experiencing…not to rush off after ten minutes because things are getting too complicated or uneasy. To stay with feelings building in the room, and stay some more.”

This book will be welcomed by psychoanalysts and psychotherapists and by all with an interest in Eigen’s work.