Out of all medical and therapeutic treatments, psychoanalysis remains one of the very few that uses no physical contact. Sigmund Freud stopped using the -pressure technique- in the late 1890s, a technique in which he would press lightly on his patient's head while insisting that they remember forgotten events. Today, touch remains virtually non-existent in adult psychoanalysis.

For the first time, this book explores the controversial issue of physical contact in the consulting room. The contributors--psychoanalysts and psychotherapists representing a diverse range of psychoanalytic...

The third volume in the Practice of Psychotherap series, -Elusive Elements in Practice, - brings together a collection of papers examining the ideas and theories more commonly regarded as off-centre, or indeed elusive, in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The papers in this volume concentrate on the religious and spiritual dimensions of the therapeutic encounter, the -aesthetic experience-, creativity, and mysticism. These -moments of relatedness-, or meetings of minds, are discussed and examined with the help of clinical examples.
This is an innovative collection that demonstrates that the...

This is a courageous collection of papers. All contributors have been prepared to go into print about situations in which difference is a significant element in the work and one around which they have felt uneasy and uncertain through finding themselves in uncharted territory. Through painstaking analysis of their experience and that of their patients and clients, each contributor provides the reader with some useful insights and guidelines for future reference as well as some clear and stimulating illustrations of effective thinking in strange and disturbing situations. What makes this...