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This book identifies and explores what is missing in therapy practice, namely the ´craft´ aspects of skilled psychoanalytic work: how theories and models are actually used in practice, what kind of reasoning is employed in conducting a session, and how interventions are composed and evaluated.

The text shows how these features of clinical thinking, which normally operate below the level of awareness, can be identified and explored in clinical practice, in supervision and in teaching. This clear and vividly written book addresses the needs of practitioners and trainees moving beyond beginner level to more skilled and attuned practice.

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Introduction.- PART I: OBSTACLES TO DEVELOPMENT 1. The Developing Practitioner.- 2. What Gets Missed out in Analytic Accounts.- 3. The Babelization of Psychoanalytic Language.- 4. Why Theory Does Not Inform Practice.- PART II: PSYCHOANALYTIC PRACTICE AS A FORM OF CRAFT 5. The Craft Metaphor.- 6. Analytic "Rules" and Craft Practice.- 7. Counter-transference and Containment Revisited.- PART III: DESCRIBING THE CRAFT: EXAMPLES FROM PRACTICE 8. A Session from an Intensive Therapy.- 9. Two Sessions from a Brief Therapy.- PART IV: Developing the Craft: Examples from Clinical Discussion, Supervision and Teaching.- 10. Thinking about Interventions: An Example from a Clinical Discussion Group.- 11. How Working Models Inform Practice: An Example from a Supervision Group.- 12. Developing One´s Own Way of Working: An Example from Teaching.- Concluding Remarks

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Laurence Spurling is Senior Lecturer in Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck College, UK, with overall responsibility for the counselling and psychotherapy programmes at Birkbeck. He is also a consultant adult psychotherapist and works in private practice as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. He is the author / editor of six previous books, including An Introduction to Psychodynamic Counselling, now in its second edition.

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