The Use of the Self: Countertransference and Communication in the Analytic Situation

Theodore Jacobs broke novel ground in 1991 thinking about analytic engagement in this classic and beloved book that is presented in this new edition insuring interest for new generations of psychoanalysts. Jacobss gi was (and is) the transla)on of challenging theory into its subtle depths of clinical application. He integrates ego psychology self psychology and object relations. Nowadays he belongs in Chodorows 2004/2019 category of The American Independent Tradition using an intersubjective ego psychology after Loewald and Erikson that is fresh and contemporary. Masterfully he shows fruitful details of how countertransference actually works verbally and nonverbally moving along clinical process. Demonstrating how limited was the old view of the analysts reactive feelings and attitudes as hindrance Jacobs shows the impact of its use for self-attunement and ultimately sensitivity to the patients life and mind. He builds here on his 1986 inventive interactive concept of enactment-- a term nowadays so useful in our thinking about unmentalized traumatic aspects of analytic interaction that we have forgotten how controversial it once would have been. . . . enthusiastically recommended for all who practice and care about psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically-oriented therapies. --ROSEMARY H. BALSAM FRCPsych (Lond) MRCP (Edin) Author of Womens Bodies in Psychoanalysis .