Interpretive Voices: Responding to Patients

249 Pages·2015·1.101 MB·English

by  Debbie Bandler Bellman, Jean Arundale

INTERPRETIVE VOICES

INTERPRETIVE VOICES
Responding to Patients
Edited by
Debbie Bandler Bellman
and Jean Arundale
First edition published in 2015 by
Karnac Books Ltd
118 Finchley Road
London NW3 5HT
Copyright © 2015 to Debbie Bandler Bellman and Jean Arundale for the edited
collection, and to the individual authors for their contributions.
The rights of the contributors to be identified as the authors of this work have
been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13: 978-1-78220-037-6
Typeset by V Publishing Solutions Pvt Ltd., Chennai, India
Printed in Great Britain
www.karnacbooks.com
For today’s and tomorrow’s analytic voices

CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS xi
INTRODUCTION xv
Jean Arundale and Debbie Bandler Bellman
CHAPTER ONE
The voice behind the couch: whatever happened
to the blank screen? 1
Sara Collins
CHAPTER TWO
Do interpretations tell the truth? 27
Jean Arundale
CHAPTER THREE
Hearing, being heard, and the fear of interpretation 43
Debbie Bandler Bellman
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viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER FOUR
Tactics and empathy: defences against projective identification 61
Lesley Steyn
CHAPTER FIVE
Double-sided interpretations and the severe superego 89
Julia Sandelson
CHAPTER SIX
The painful relinquishment of baseless hope: interpreting
small steps towards reality 117
Michael Halton
CHAPTER SEVEN
Shades of doubt: scepticism, cynicism, and fundamentalism 143
Simon Archer
CHAPTER EIGHT
Interpreting two kinds of love 165
Joscelyn Richards
CHAPTER NINE
Destroying the knowledge of the need for love 189
David Morgan
CHAPTER TEN
“Holding and Interpretation”: Winnicott at work 205
Lesley Caldwell
INDEX 227
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are very grateful to the many who have helped with this book.
Especial thanks go to our contributors, for all their hard work and
keenness to write, and without whom this volume would not exist.
We have welcomed the chance to publish again with Karnac, and
are indebted to our editorial contacts, Roderick Tweedy, the Project
Manager Kate Pearce, and all others on Karnac’s production team.
Our gratitude goes also to our colleagues, supervisors, and analysts,
whose analytic voices have all made invaluable contributions to the
development of our own.
To our patients, we say thank you for guiding us in how to listen and
speak in ways that are interpretively meaningful. In order to preserve
the confidentiality of patients, we have left out any identifying details
and disguised all clinical illustrations.
Last but not least, we would like to thank our families and important
others for their ongoing support and encouragement.
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