Reverie and Interpretation

'This book is a masterpiece that captures what is most important about psychoanalysis.'- L. Bryce Boyer'A new work by Thomas Ogden is always an event, and this, his fifth book, continues the sensitive and perennially creative spirit of his earlier writings. He has a brilliantly originally way of communicating the heart of the psychoanalytic partnership - a journey without maps in which two people share a unique experience to which both contribute, thanks to the myriad aspects of the jointly generated "analytic third". Of prime importance to the analytic partnership is the understanding and use of "reverie", which includes the daydreams, sexual fantasies, bodily sensations, and worries that assail every analyst during every session. These preoccupations, cast off as extraneous in the literature, are presented as a vital contribution to the psychoanalytic quest ("reverie is an emotional compass. that helps me gain my bearings in the analytic situation"). As always, Ogden's theoretical concepts are richly illustrated clinically, allowing insight into his way of using the overlapping reverie states of analyst and analysand in the course of the analytic voyage.'- Joyce McDougall'In a growing series of remarkable works by Thomas Ogden, this is undoubtedly the finest. His conceptions of the use of transference/countertransference is raised to a newer, higher level - and his chapter "On the Use of Language in Psychoanalysis" itself justifies the book.'- James S. Grotstein