Suffering and Sacrifice in the Clinical Encounter

I have experienced this book as thought-provoking, offering a feast of psychoanalytic ideas and language, rich in Western classical and biblical allusions and paradoxes.

-- Alexandra Maeja Raicar, Attachment, November 2022

‘Suffering and Sacrifice in the Clinical Encounter makes a truly unique contribution to the clinical challenges of working with patients gripped by developmental loss and trauma. The authors sound a humanitarian plea for analytic therapists to learn ways to leverage their painful countertransference responses with such “difficult to reach” patients. Through many diverse theories and evocative clinical illustrations, these four highly dedicated and skilled therapists offer singular ways of thinking about, and working with, such patients whose early dependency longings went unheeded, tragically, from the beginning of life. The authors describe the transformative potential achievable if patients could bravely enter a therapeutic relationship where genuine psychic contact can be supported and contained; where suffering and sacrifice can be investigated and symbolized; and where mourning of traumatic loss can be facilitated and reworked. This collection belongs in the library of students and psychoanalytic practitioners who are committed to helping traumatized patients refind renewal, hope, and aliveness.’

-- Caroline Sehon, MD, FABP Director, International Psychotherapy Institute

The theory employed is rich and versatile, the clinical vignettes extremely vivid and instructive. The style of the book is happily communicative and allows a pleasant and rewarding read. I can only recommend reading this fascinating and brilliant book to all analysts, psychotherapists, and scholars of human sciences interested in using psychoanalysis to understand humanity and alleviate psychic suffering.

-- Giuseppe Civitarese, member of the American Psychoanalytic Association and Italian Psychoanalytic Society

This wide ranging and scholarly book goes a long way in answering what Leon Wurmser called “the riddle of masochism.” The authors remind readers of the deep philosophical and humanistic roots of psychoanalysis, while bringing their thinking squarely into the clinical situation and the complexities introduced in the therapeutic relationship by sadomasochistic dynamics.

-- Jack Novick and Kerry Kelly Novick, authors of ‘Fearful Symmetry: The Development and Treatment of Sadomasochism’ and ‘Freedom to Choose: Two Systems of Self-Regulatio