Synopses & Reviews
For Margaret Arden, the transformation produced by insight in the consulting room is symbolically equivalent to the spiritual journey towards enlightenment. There is such a thing as psychic truth, she believes, which can be found in all religions as well as psychoanalysis. The patient needs the analyst to recognise the truth of who he or she is. The work of transference and countertransference enables the truth to be made manifest in the consulting room.
In this way, psychoanalysis is a new version of the ancient theme shared by all the great religions. The loss of illusion, the giving up of attachments to a false reality, the inevitability of suffering and expiation are all present in psychoanalysis. The miracle of psychoanalysis is that when a person comes to understand the core of childhood experience, all anger, all the rejection of life, turns out to have been for one purpose - to preserve, at whatever cost, the child who is capable of love.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [114]-118 and index.