Dynamic psychotherapy research has become revitalized, especially in the last three decades. This major study by Sidney Blatt, Richard Ford, and their associates evaluates long-term intensive treatment (hospital- ization and 4-times-a-week psychotherapy) of very disturbed patients at the Austen Riggs Center. The center provides a felicitous setting for recovery-beautiful buildings on lovely wooded grounds just off the quiet main street of the New England town of Stockbridge, Massa- chusetts. The center, which has been headed in succession by such capable leaders as Robert Knight, Otto Will,...

In this startling new way to read the parables, Ford unlocks seven of the longer parables attributed to Jesus. He focuses on the two major characters in each parable, who are separated by social inequality, and he entirely bypasses the common approach that assumes that the superior character represents God and the subordinate character the Christian believer.Drawing on his own therapeutic training, Ford offers unique insight into the psychodynamics at work in the parables. He proposes that the two characters are equally balanced in their multiple misperceptions of each other and shows how...

Dynamic psychotherapy research has become revitalized, especially in the last three decades. This major study by Sidney Blatt, Richard Ford, and their associates evaluates long-term intensive treatment (hospital- ization and 4-times-a-week psychotherapy) of very disturbed patients at the Austen Riggs Center. The center provides a felicitous setting for recovery-beautiful buildings on lovely wooded grounds just off the quiet main street of the New England town of Stockbridge, Massa- chusetts. The center, which has been headed in succession by such capable leaders as Robert Knight, Otto Will,...