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>-001(3! This book, based on a doctoral thesis, provides an insight into patients’ experiences of psychoanalysis as they describe the factors, which they considered facilitated or impeded their analytic treatment. It addresses the question “What do patients want?” and explores what led to their different outcomes. The context for this book is a psychoanalytic culture where very little is known or understood about what actually takes place between patient and analyst, from the patient’s perspective. The field of literature on psychoanalytic process and outcome studies has generally privileged the practitioner or researcher’s voice, whilst underutilizing rich published accounts of patients talking about their own experiences. This book was thus an attempt to provide an in-depth understanding of an experience usually mystified, and poorly understood, by those outside the analytic dyad. =&.4$'! A qualitative methodology was used to enable the exploration of this broad question and to provide rich and trustworthy data. The complexities inherent in psychoanalytic clinical work, carried out behind closed doors and influenced by unconscious phantasies and dynamics, presented challenges, which have been explored and discussed. >10%5&! Eighteen participants were interviewed, eleven women and seven men, ages ranging from 31 to 60, and living in four Australian states. The criteria for participating were that they had completed (or ended) an analysis, and it was with a professionally recognized psychoanalyst. The patients free- associated to an open question about their experiences, providing very rich accounts of their analyses, which they demonstrated with clinical material. Their stories generally indicated a sophisticated understanding of the analytic process. @)15-1.*$#! The chapters were arranged in a journey format, paralleling the analytic journey itself. A significant focus was the desire to be a ‘patient-partner’ not a ‘patient-victim’. Major themes, which emerged spontaneously, related to choice of an analyst, procedures around the assessment and ending phases of analysis, the quality of engagement between both partners in the transference/counter-transference relationship, and issues to do with silences, authority and powers of negotiation. The patients delineated factors, which either facilitated liberating experiences and major life changes, or resulted in dissatisfying or ‘failed’ analyses. A surprising central theme emerged around a strong paternal transference, which is described in a separate chapter entitled “the analyst as father”. Questions were raised and discussed as to the importance of this specific transference. The patients offered further personal reflections on what they considered as imperative for a ‘good’ analysis. Significant findings are discussed in each chapter, then key conceptual issues are brought together at the end, highlighting implications for psychoanalysis, its training procedures, Institute policies and clinical practice.
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