Book Review: Hidden Faults: Recognizing and Resolving Therapeutic Disjunctions

Abstract

The advent of a Freudian revisionist attitude in psychoanalysis has heralded several different models of how therapy works. For example, the work of Melanie Klein deviated from the classic approach in placing the oedipus complex at an early age in the life of the child and in offering the paranoid-schizoid and the depressive positions as central to early development. However, only in recent years has an almost anticlassic understanding appeared in the literature in the schools of self-psychology, of relational therapy, and finally, of the intersubjectivist model-the genre to which this book belongs. This is Frankel's second book on the technique of therapy. Three years ago, I reviewed the first, Intricate Engagements, in this journal. The focus of Frankel's present monograph is the role of the disjunction, a state of affairs that occurs during psychoanalytic therapy and both derails and enhances the process. This book's relentless focus on this process makes it a most readable new perspective on the difficulties of therapy.