Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in the Independent Tradition

'The British Independent tradition refers to an orientation of those psychoanalysts who do not belong to a school whose members share selected basic assumptions of psychoanalytic theory. This book is indeed in the best Independent Tradition, since it provides a space in which all authors have independently discussed creatively and sometimes critically those concepts that have appeared to them most relevant when giving meaning to a clinical problem they have been confronted with in their work.'- Margaret Tonnesmann'This book is a collection of clinical essays by Members of the British Association of Psychotherapists. Each essay provides a true story about the painful states a person can break down into, tormented by the tortured dramas gone through with their therapist in finding new ways of feeling and doing. The theory used is psychoanalytic from Freud and his followers, Kleinians and Americans, but mostly from the British Independents. However, the stories themselves bear the mark of each writer - some are brilliant, even little works of art.'From a wider point of view, this book and its sister about the Kleinian tradition, is a small historic step in the growth of psychoanalytic thinking in Britain. It is the first time that psychoanalytic therapists of adults have brought together a collective work devoted to a particular strand of psychoanalytic thinking. It is one more indication that psychoanalytic thinking has come to stay in these islands.'- Eric Rayner

Stanley Ruszczynski is a senior Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist with the British Association of Psychotherapists and a Direct Member of the International Psychoanalytic Association. He is the Clinical Director of the Portman Clinic and a Consultant Adult Psychotherapist.