Harold Stewart – författare

Harold Stewart, a distinguished psychoanalyst of more than 30 years' experience, began his medical career as a general practitioner. He was drawn first towards hypnotherapy, then to psychoanalysis, as a more sensitive, productive and far-reaching method of exploring patients' problems.In this book Stewart draws deeply on his own clinical experience to focus on changes in the patient's experience of inner space, and to record the growth of his own understanding of the patient's experience and how this can change. Beginning with a vivid account of the role of collusion in the myth of Jocasta and Oedipus, he goes on to a theoretical discussion of thinking, dreams, inner space and the hypnotic state, in the context of extensive clinical experience. The second part of the book centres on practical clinical issues and problems of technique, tackling in particular the role of transference interpretations, other agents of change, and the problems encountered in benign and malignant types of regression.The wealth of clinical material and the author's informality and openness in presenting his experiences of working with very disturbed patients will be of immense practical value to other practitioners. Psychic Experience and Problems of Technique will help psychoanalysts and psychotherapists to understand the nature of clinical problems which are often encountered but seldom acknowledged.

Whilst Michael Balint's applied work is widely known, many of his theoretical contributions have been incorporated into everyday analysis without due recognition of their source. In this account of his thinking, Harold Stewart evaluates the extent of Balint's contribution to psychoanalysis and firmly re-establishes his place within the development of Object Relations theory.The first section examines Balint's theories of human psychological development, defining such concepts as primary love, ocnophilia and philobatia, the basic fault and the three areas of the mind. The author places Balint's understanding of the analyst's influence and technique in the context of his relationship with Sandor Ferenczi, his analyst and mentor.The second section of this work looks at how the "Balint Group" has contributed to the assessment and understanding of emotional problems in various areas, including general practice, marital work and psychosexual medicine. A charismatic teacher, Balint's method of work with General Practitioners has become an established worldwide institution. Features of this work, including the use of countertransference and the affective response of the doctor are vividly described here by two General Practitioners, Andrew Elder and Robert Gosling.Michael Balint: Object Relations, Pure and Applied brings alive Balint's teaching and practice and demonstrates the relevance of his theories to many of the problematic issues in current analytic practice.