Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective

by Joyce Anne Slochower

This work addresses holding in a variety of clinical contexts and focuses especially on holding processes in relation to issues of dependence, self-involvement, and hate.

Genres: Psychoanalysis, Psychology

204 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1996

Reviews

[Antigone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holding is a method available for use in psychological treatment. It is an approach adopted by therapists who find themselves confronted by a particularly vulnerable patient. Arising from the studies of noted object relations theorist Donald Winnicott, the creation of a "holding environment" is an analyst's attempt to mirror the safe, supportive, and attentive dynamic that exists between an attuned mother and her child. This is a powerful interactive experience and one that, it is posited, lays the foundation for optimism in all future human-to-human exchanges.

Joyce Anne Slochower, a visiting clinical professor at New York University's Department of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, has written a richly-delineated and illuminating work on the subject of holding in the therapeutic process. She speaks to both the model and the metaphor, then examines situations of particular difficulty for the analyst - such as holding a self-involved patient and the holding of ruthlessness and hate. (When given a safe enough space, what is repressed will often rise to the surface.) Also addressed are failures in holding, the holding function of mourning, and a fascinating chapter she titles "On the Edge," which deals with patients "who seem to remain on the perimeter of the treatment experience, forever returning to states of mistrust and despair about themselves as well as the analytic process."

This is a short book, less than two hundred pages, and designed for those possessed of more than a passing acquaintance with psychology and the treatment dynamic. However, should you find the subject of interest? It would be hard to locate a better modern-day treatise on the method than this.

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meditative, lovely.