Customer Reviews

The Objects of Hope (Relational Perspectives Book Series)

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Objects of Hope offers a clearly written, insightful exploration of one of the most pressing issues in contemporary psychoanalysis: how the analyst's subjectivity informs the treatment of every analysand. While many in the field have argued that we must attend to the irreducible subjectivity of the analyst if we are to understand how the psychoanalytic process succeeds and fails, few offer historicized and specific ways of thinking about how the analyst's subjectivity operates at particular moments in the analytic process. Cooper narrates his own experiences in analytic sessions to show how he learns from his patients even as they gain understanding of themselves through their interactions with him. But he also offers a view of the place of the analyst's subjectivity in the history of psychoanalysis: from Freud to Fairbairn to Loewald to Winnicott, and beyond. Best of all, Cooper tells a good story, a story that is situated in several theoretical traditions at once without getting bogged down in jargon. A deceptively easy read, this book will be enormously useful to practitioners in the field as well as to those who desire an introduction to the most provocative thinking in psychoanalysis today.

Cooper writes as he thinks, in a manner that urges the reader to think hard, and to be honest about his or her work, while also inviting openness and playfulness. One has the sense from this book that it is possible to be a good therapist and analyst, yet to also be a human being. Makes you want to be a therapist, or even to be in therapy.