Best books about psychotherapy? | Ask MetaFilter:
Adam Phillips, who has the general editorship of the above mentioned Penguin series, offers great synthesis and engaging writing which combines a general theoretical engagement with clinical material. His book On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored is still one of the best out there about the intersection between theory and practice, and the fascination of the clinical encounter. Terrors and Experts is also quite good. Some of his books (Monogamy, Flirting) are slight but fun, and I've not read his more recent stuff. good. I think a rec'd On Kissing to me -- and coincidentally (before or after? after I guess) I picked up Terror & Experts at sjca bkst on ~ clearance shelf. and did a read that one in particular bcs of ~ in conversatn with me?
DW Winnicott's essays are really very good, and his theory is sound. It's interesting to read a book like Playing and Reality next to a book about analysis with Winnicott written by Margaret Little called, if I remember it right, Psychotic Anxiety and something something. The first part of that book has a masterly story of her difficult analysis with DWW, the second part is a less convincing theoretical essay. Psychotic Anxiety & Containment: .... of my analysis with W --- a recommended this to me, I think. by email. when I was in Seattle? and I purchased one via ABE and had sent to dBs to meet up with the boxes of books I was sending to Chgo...
Hope and Dread in Psychoanalysis by Stephen Mitchell is a reasonably recent very well regarded book about, well, analysis, which is syncretic and pretty good. A lot of people think very highly of it. now this one I'm pretty sure I read independent of a - just liked the look of it, bought here from semcoop. maybe was used as a text for SSA? no, I think just fr psych sxn. yeah, of monograph by analyst using case studies, this one stands out as likeable.
(Oh, a great synthetic text book which is well written (but still a textbook) is called Inside Out, Outside In. It does a great job of pulling together the major psychoanalytic schools and describing their differences and intersections.) familiar - bcs! huh. i think I pulled this out from Bonnie's books when I was visiting her in CA and visiting Wright Inst. did look good though a txtbk.
...There are, of course, a ton of other writers. There's a lot of overly theoretical and boring work, unfortunately too much written by Americans. In general I don't have much truck with American versions of psychoanalysis, which generally fall into the ego psychology (and the newer version: self-psychology) school, which seems to me to be overly normative, elevate the role of the analyst in the name of that normativity, and disregard the strangness of the unconscious.
posted by OmieWise at 8:16 AM PST on July 18