Taking Risks from the Unconscious

In this unique and pioneering work, Don Marcus substantiates his conviction that careful and skillful self-disclosure enhances the analytic work. The details of two deeply insightful, sensitive and empathic analysts further the cause of intersubjectivty as a modern tool of psychoanalytic therapy. -- Victor Bloom M.D., Wayne State University Department of Psychiatry
Among the most important steps that psychotherapists need to take is to find meaningful ways to obtain feedback from patients about how they experienced the therapeutic work. For psychoanalysts this is an especially difficult and tricky problem since we cannot take conscious responses at face value and because we must always consider the transference. In this trailblazing book, Donald Marcus and his patient, "Hope," make a first brave effort to collaborate so as to explore a rather unconventional and innovative analysis from both sides of the couch. Exploring self-disclosure, interpreting from the unconscious, erotic countertransference, dual-relationship, and post-analytic contact, this moving narrative will present a clinical and ethical challenge to all clinicians. -- Lewis Aron, Ph.D., director, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis
By challenging many of our assumptions about analytic technique, this innovative, daring book makes a valuable contribution to the debate on the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis. The joint collaboration of patient and analyst provides rare insights into the healing process in a successful analysis and raises many intriguing questions about the way that therapy works. This is a book that should be read by all those engaged in the field of analytic therapy. -- Theodore J. Jacobs, M.D, training and supervising analyst, New York Psychoanalytic Institute and New York University Psychoanalytic Institute
This is a remarkable account of an analysis that in its frankness probably violates orthodoxy and ethical rules. The authors are to be commended for their openness in describing how they worked. Such truthful reports of what actually takes place in an analysis will allow us to make comparisons of a variety of techniques....This book is recommended to all who are interested in psychoanalysis and to ethics committees who want to keep informed as to where psychoanalytic practice may be heading. * The Journal Of Nervous and Mental Health, September 2008 *
This is an incredible work. It is the well-organized, superbly presented story not only of a highly successful and intimate analysis, but also of an analysis conducted in a most unusual way while remaining solidly within legitimate boundaries and frame. In this analysis, Dr. Marcus and his patient, "Hope," took great risks to achieve intimacy with one another and succeeded, so much so that their relationship amounted to a virtual analytic love affair that was conducted within legitimate bounds. What is new about Dr. Marcus's technique in this analysis is that his approach and interventions issued directly from the unconscious, in the style of Bion. This book is beautifully organized into the author's clinical notes, to which are added the patient's and the analyst's retrospective views about each session. This is a book about a wondrous, technical approach that asks for legitimacy and that causes us to pause and to consider it as a technique on the cutting edge of psychoanalysis. The authors are to be congratulated. -- James S. Grotstein, clinical professor of psychiatry, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA; author, A Beam of Intense Darkness: Wilfred Bion's Lega