Looking for Ground

Looking for Ground is a sophisticated, theoretically rich revisiting of some old and beloved haunts - neutrality, abstinence, analytic subjectivity, and cure by love - in order to get a new purchase on the question of therapeutic action. By appreciating the virtues of a wide range of clinical strategies in countertransference work, this book has the potential to take the field of clinical psychoanalysis beyond the reductive opposition of analytic disclosure and analytic deprivation. - Adrienne Harris, Ph.D., Author, Gender as Soft Assembly (Analytic Press, 2005) It is a valuable, extensive, and comprehensive exposition of the history, development, theories, and practice of psychoanalysis...Carnochan has made a contribution that is modern and controversial. While he surely is not the last word on countertransference, his book should stimulate valuable discussion of a much neglected topic. - Ernest S. Wolf, M.D., Psychoanalytic Quarterly There can be little doubt that the subject of countertransference has moved to center stage in current psychoanalytic discourse. This shift raises extraordinary challenges involving epistemology, technique, and theory. In this superb new contribution, Peter Carnochan addresses those challenges. With meticulous scholarship and admirable even-handedness, he investigates the implications of our current emphasis on countertransference for contemporary psychoanalysis. Both candidates and experienced analysts will find this book a valuable resource. - Glen O. Gabbard, M.D., The Menninger Clinic Looking for Ground is a brilliantly conceived, thoroughly researched, and superbly written historical-conceptual study of psychoanalytic technique that becomes profoundly illuminating of psychoanalysis in general. One might have thought there were no new, imaginative ways to approach the historical and conceptual issues involved in psychoanalytic technique and, more specifically, in the actual participation of the analyst in the treatment process. But the author of this book has accomplished just that! By choosing countertransference and its vicissitudes as the thread around which to organize his novel insights about the analyst's role and function in treatment, he found the ground he was looking for. Carnochan presents his ideas in a narrative that is not only clinically and philosophically sophisticated but also highly readable. He is at the cutting edge of contemporary psychoanalysis and takes the reader along on his exciting journey. - Paul H. Ornstein, M.D., Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis, University of Cincinnati