Moments of Uncertainty in Therapeutic Practice: Interpreting within the Matrix of Projective Identification, Countertransference, and Enactment

Author(s) : Robert Waska

Moments of Uncertainty in Therapeutic Practice: Interpreting within the Matrix of Projective Identification, Countertransference, and Enactment

Book Details

  • Publisher : Columbia U.P.
  • Published : 2011
  • Cover : Paperback
  • Pages : 272
  • Category :
    Individual Psychotherapy
  • Category 2 :
    Psychoanalysis
  • Catalogue No : 32796
  • ISBN 13 : 9780231151535
  • ISBN 10 : 9780231151
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One of therapy's greatest challenges is the moment of transference, when a patient unconsciously transfers emotion or desire to a new and present object - in some cases the therapist. During the course of treatment, a patient's projections and the analyst's struggle to divert them can stress, distort, or contaminate the therapeutic relationship. It may lead to various forms of enactment, in which the therapist unconsciously colludes with the client in interpretation and treatment, or it can lead to projective identification, in which the client imposes negative feelings and behaviors onto the therapist, further interfering with analysis and intervention. Drawing on decades of clinical case experience, Robert Waska leads practitioners through the steps of phantasy and transference mechanisms and their ability to increase, oppose, embrace, or neutralize analytic contact. Operating from a psychoanalytic perspective, he explains how to cope professionally with moments of transference and maintain an objective interpretive stance within the ongoing matrix of projective identification, countertransference, and enactment.

Each chapter discusses a wide spectrum of cases and clinical situations, describing in detail the processes that invite a playing out of the patient's phantasies and the work required to reestablish balance. Refreshingly candid, Waska recognizes the imperfections of analysis yet reaffirms its potential for greater psychological integration and stability for the patient. He acknowledges the limits and frequent roadblocks of working with difficult patients, such as those who suffer from psychic retreat, paranoid phantasies, and depressive anxieties, yet he indicates an effective path for resetting the clinical moment and redirecting the course for treatment.

About the Author(s)

Robert Waska MFT, PhD is a graduate of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies and has a private psychoanalytic practice for individuals and couples in San Francisco and Marin County. Dr. Waska has taught and presented in the Bay Area as well as internationally. He is the author of ten published textbooks on psychoanalytic theory and technique, is a contributing author for both The Handbook of Contemporary Psychotherapy and The Handbook of Hate, and has published over eighty articles in professional journals. Dr. Waska's work focuses on various contemporary Kleinian topics including projective identification, loss, borderline and psychotic states, the practical realities of psychoanalytic practice in the modern world, and the establishment of analytic contact with difficult, hard to reach patients. He emphasizes the moment-to-moment understanding of transference and phantasy as the vehicle for gradual integration and mastery of unconscious conflict between self and other.

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