Shrink Dreams: The Secret Longings, Fantasies, and Prejudices of Therapists and How They Affect Their Patients - Softcover

Myers, Wayne A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 067186677X ISBN 13: 9780671866778

Publisher: Touchstone, 1993

Synopsis

A behind-the-scenes look at psychotherapy discusses ten therapists whose actions put their patients' treatment and occasionally their own lives in jeopardy

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

Don't be put off by the lurid title, the occasionally sensationalistic material, or Myers's clunky prose. Behind them is an often fascinating group of firsthand case studies of ``countertransference''--the problems that develop when a therapist allows his or her own hang-ups (and unconscious agendas) to interfere with a patient's treatment. Myers, who supervises psychiatrists and other therapists at leading New York hospitals, offers nine accounts of misguided shrinks whom he counseled--plus an affecting story of his own personal triumph over countertransference. Two of the cases are too melodramatic to yield serious insight: the young psychiatrist, himself sexually confused, who encouraged a male patient to have a sex-change operation, then moved in with him/her; a middle-aged female doctor who treated a young woman without revealing her own long-ago affair with the patient's father. But the others are convincingly detailed and clearly told: Gabriel, whose unconscious fantasy of rescuing his mother (a concentration-camp survivor) was projected onto a female patient. Stan, whose own sexual inhibitions prevented him from responding appropriately to a patient's promiscuity. Black therapist Joyce, whose feelings about white families (and her own past) interfered with her treatment of a young white woman trying to become independent of a coddling family. (Myers has made interracial therapy something of a specialty.) Plus: sadistic Edie, trouble-maker Henry, greedy and corrupt Leonard, vengeful Alicia--and Myers himself, who succeeded in treating an older man's impotence only after realizing that he was unconsciously using the patient as a father-substitute. Uneven, then, but generally solid, shrewd, short on jargon, and long on common sense--with a powerful message: all therapists, even drug-dispensing psychiatrists, need to have as much therapy as possible before practicing on the rest of us. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

Addressing himself to both general and professional audiences, a practicing psychotherapist and professor of psychiatry at Cornell Medical Center's Payne Whitney Psychiatric Center in Manhattan examines countertransference, the feelings and fantasies awakened in the therapist by the patient that almost invariably interfere with the healing process of therapy. In highly readable chapters with such titles as "The Dream of Rescuing a Damsel in Distress" or "The Dream of Having the Perfect Child," Myers offers accounts drawn from his 30 years as a supervising therapist in which other therapists have sought his help in dealing with troublesome cases. Urging practicing therapists to complete their own psychoanalytically based therapy in order to better understand the impact of their past on their responses to and treatment of patients, Myers also encourages patients to question therapists about their training. While the chapters have a schematic sameness and some of his interpretations seem pat, Myers's observations serve both audiences well. Psychotherapy Book Club alternate.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 067186677X
• ISBN 13: 9780671866778
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256