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This new edition reflects the growing use of short term therapy across a variety of settings. Packed with new material on key issues, the book explores the therapeutic relationship, the length of therapy and the evidence base for various forms of therapy. This is key reading for anyone wishing to incorporate a psychodynamic element in their work.

In The Power of Specificity in Psychotherapy: When Therapy Works_And When It Doesn't Howard Bacal presents specificity theory, a contemporary process theory of psychotherapy that holds that therapy happens at the fit between the patient's particular therapeutic needs and the therapist's capacity to respond to them, both of which will emerge and change within the unique process of each particular dyad. Specificity theory challenges the traditional method and epistemology of psychoanalysis, wherein the understanding of the patient and the therapeutic response are apprehended through rules and prescriptions that are generated through the application of structure theories. The therapeutic engagement must necessarily and continually be monitored and adjusted to fit the specific and changing needs, capacities, and limitations of both participants, regardless of the therapist's formal working theories. Grounded in the innovative thinking of Sandor Ferenczi and drawing as well from the creative work of Michael Balint, Wilfred Bion, Donald Winnicott, Marion Milner, and Heinz Kohut, the perspectives of specificity theory are corroborated by cutting-edge findings in contemporary neurobiology and infant research. The Power of Specificity in Psychotherapy challenges psychotherapists to reconsider how treatment is optimally practiced.

The Modern Kleinian Approach to Psychoanalytic Technique: Clinical Illustrations describes how today's practitioner typically treats a number of types of very disturbed and hard-to-reach patients who, while prone to intense acting out and early termination, are in great need of in-depth psychological reorganization. Many cases barely get off the ground due to levels of pathological conflict and destructive phantasy that make self/object connection extremely fragile. However, the modern Kleinian approach makes it possible to establish analytic contact within even the most chaotic situations and create a therapeutic experience that can be significant and meaningful. In doing so, there can be a healing process and the birth of new object relational experiences and interpersonal exchanges. Robert Waska details a more flexible method of practicing psychoanalysis, Analytic Contact, an approach that brings the healing possibilities of psychoanalysis to the more disturbed patients who tend to fill private practice offices. In addition, Analytic Contact enables the clinician to reach populations that are not usually considered easily treatable by the psychoanalytic method, including psychotic patients, couples who are seeking help with marital issues, and chronic borderline and narcissistic individuals.

In this direct and scholarly book, Dr. Joseph Fernando provides the first in-depth exploration and up-to-date revision of the psychoanalytic theory of defenses since Anna Freud's 1936 classic, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. The workings of three basic forms of defense_repression, denial, and post-traumatic defenses_are clearly described and illustrated with examples from Dr. Fernando's clinical practice. While comprehensive and authoritative in its coverage of defenses, the book is also highly original and clinically relevant, as Fernando introduces and illustrates new concepts including the zero process (a form of mental functioning related to trauma), contrast defenses (a type of denial defense that leads to repetition), and compound defenses (defenses formed by the tight melding of two or more basic defenses). This is a book not only of innovation but also of integration. Classical psychoanalytic concepts are integrated with new ideas related to current concerns with trauma, denial, and narcissism, and theoretical explications are integrated with practical advice about the handling of different defenses and clinical situations. This book will appeal to both beginners and seasoned clinicians and theoreticians, as well as to anyone interested in psychoanalytic thought.

Segal establishes herself as one of the most productive and sensitive clinical psychoanalysts in the field today. Using techniques based on the work of both Freud and Klein, she shows a consistent interest in working with patients presenting the most severe type of psychopathology, as is evident in this volume of her clinical and theoretical papers.