Books by Robert Waska

Introduces the clinical concept of analytic contact. This book follows a wide spectrum of cases and clinical situations where hard to reach patients are provided the opportunity for health and healing through the establishment of analytic contact.

Provides the psychoanalyst or psychotherapist with a more flexible method of practicing psychoanalysis. This title examines specific groups of patients that present unique challenges to the psychoanalyst.

A penetrating discussion of such issues as projective identification, symbolization, transference and countertransference from a Kleinian perspective.

This book shows how the modern Kleinian works with the most taxing of their patients, and examines the current state of traditional methods of training at psychoanalytic institutes, which are shown to be in need of renewal and critical restructuring.

Robert Waska introduces a groundbreaking view of modern Kleinian psychoanalytic work applied to a wide spectrum of patients. The contemporary Kleinian approach of Analytic Contact redefines psychoanalytic psychotherapy as the treatment of choice for neurotic, borderline, and narcissistic patients with hope, change, and growth as a realistic goal.

"Projective Identification in the Clinical Setting" presents a detailed study of Kleinian literature, setting a background of understanding for the day-to-day analytic atmosphere in which projective identification takes place.

The book takes the reader ΓÇ£into the trenchesΓÇ¥ with the author as he describes his psychoanalytic work with a variety of patients with difficult and complex conditions. The reader becomes familiar with the clinical and theoretical difficulties psychoanalysts encounter in their day to day practice with such patients, especially the counter-transference reactions so common with patients who rely on rigid defense systems. While presented from a Kleinian viewpoint, the book is written in a very inclusive and flexible manner that brings together a variety of analytic thought and provides easy access to the reader unfamiliar with Kleinian theory. The book provides a wealth of in-depth clinical material including severe personality disorders, chronic depressive conditions, pathological phantasies of grief and loss, and destructive states of narcissism. Each chapter provides a vivid look into the workings of psychoanalytic treatment in the context of the contemporary focus on understanding projective identification, enactment, acting out, and the careful and thoughtful interpretive working through of these complex clinical situations. Much of the book also addresses how to notice, learn from, and utilize these volatile moments. Indeed, once properly understood, what once was fertile ground for the analystΓÇÖs acting out can become a bridge to better translating and interpreting the patientΓÇÖs core anxieties and providing a therapeutic experience of change and growth.This volume shows the therapeutic power the modern Kleinian approach can have with patients throughout the diagnostic spectrum. By attending to the interpersonal, transactional, and intra-psychic levels of transference, counter-transference and unconscious phantasy with consistent here-and-now and in-the-moment interpretation, the Kleinian method can be therapeutically successful with severely neurotic, borderline, and narcissistic patients. By making the goal of psychoanalytic treatment the gradual establishment of analyst contact, a broader range of patients can be helped and understood.

One of therapy's greatest challenges is the moment of transference, when a patient unconsciously transfers emotion or desire to a new and present object in some cases the therapist. During the course of treatment, a patient's projections and the analyst's struggle to divert them can stress, distort, or contaminate the therapeutic relationship. It may lead to various forms of enactment, in which the therapist unconsciously colludes with the client in interpretation and treatment, or it can lead to projective identification, in which the client imposes negative feelings and behaviors onto the therapist, further interfering with analysis and intervention.Drawing on decades of clinical case experience, Robert Waska leads practitioners through the steps of phantasy and transference mechanisms and their ability to increase, oppose, embrace, or neutralize analytic contact. Operating from a psychoanalytic perspective, he explains how to cope professionally with moments of transference and maintain an objective interpretive stance within the ongoing matrix of projective identification, countertransference, and enactment. Each chapter discusses a wide spectrum of cases and clinical situations, describing in detail the processes that invite a playing out of the patient's phantasies and the work required to reestablish balance. Refreshingly candid, Waska recognizes the imperfections of analysis yet reaffirms its potential for greater psychological integration and stability for the patient. He acknowledges the limits and frequent roadblocks of working with difficult patients, such as those who suffer from psychic retreat, paranoid phantasies, and depressive anxieties, yet he indicates an effective path for resetting the clinical moment and redirecting the course for treatment.