In this second edition of Endings &
Beginnings (Routledge, 2006), Herbert J.
Schlesinger explores endings and beginnings
within psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy; both
the obvious main endings and beginnings of any course in
treatment, and the many little endings and beginnings
that permeate analysis. The second edition contains new
chapters including one on transference and
counter-transference as sources of information about the
process of therapy and as sources of difficulty in
ending. It deals especially with the impact of
prospective ending on the therapist, which if not
understood and well handled, might interfere with
working through and impede termination, if not ending
itself. Another new chapter deals with the difficulties
in terminating with especially narcissistic
patients. One of the main criticisms against
psychoanalysis and the psychotherapies derived from it
is that it lacks criteria for when the patient has had
enough. Herbert J. Schlesinger shows
how we may view the process as a series of episodes each
with an ending and possibly with a new beginning. He
presents the way patients signal, even before they are
aware of it, that ending is "in the air," and how it
organizes how they experience the therapy. If alerted,
the therapist can make use of these signals to locate
self and patient in the process. So informed, the
therapist is better able to discern when the therapy
should end and help the patient work through the issues
of separation and loss to terminate the treatment
constructively. All patients tend to end
psychotherapy in the way they end all other
relationships. In several chapters on the problems
related to severe regression, therapists can learn how
to help vulnerable patients, for whom attachment is
problematic, deal with separation non-traumatically.
In Endings & Beginnings 2nd Edition,
the theory of the continuous experience of ending and
beginning and the array of landmarks that parse the
clinical process are distinct advances to the technique
of psychoanalysis and the psychotherapies derived from
it. Schlesinger offers many clinical
examples of ending and beginning with their technical
problems and solutions. This contribution to the
technique of ending and beginning psychotherapy
electively will be useful to practicing psychotherapists
and psychoanalysts, and to undergraduate and
post-graduate students in clinical psychology,
psychiatry and social work.
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