The Analytic Experience

What is the nature of the psychoanalytic process? That is the question Neville Symington addresses in "The Analytic Experience." Based on a series of lectures he gave at the Tavistock Clinic in London, Symington discusses his topic through an unusually evocative selection of clinical examples. The aim of the original lectures was to give a general overview of the unfolding of psychoanalysis. Symington believes that psychoanalysis cannot be taught because it can only occur through a personal act of understanding; psychoanalysis is the agent which prompts self-analysis. He shows how psychoanalysis has evolved through a series of different interpretations and his own interpretation is highly personal. "The Analytic Experience" provides a basic introduction to Freud's theory of the psyche, the work of Freud's close contemporaries and the developments of psychoanalysis most frequently associated with the work of Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, and Bion. Written in a lively conversational style, "The Analytic Experience" is accessible both to beginners and to those with a special interest in one or another of the post-Freudian developments in psychoanalysis.