Psychoanalytic Reflections: Training and Practice by Sandra Buechler

Sandra Buechler, Ph.D. is a graduate of the William Alanson White Institute, where she is now on the faculty, and a Training and Supervising Analyst. She is also a supervisor at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital’s internship and postdoctoral programs, and a faculty member and supervisor at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy. Dr. Buechler has lectured in Norway, Italy, Scotland, Mexico, Chile, Japan, and at institutes in the USA. In 2009 she guest edited an issue of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, on the subject of analytic training, including papers on training in other cultures. Her first book, Clinical Values: Emotions that Guide Psychoanalytic Treatment, (Analytic Press, 2004) has been translated into Japanese, German, Italian, and Spanish. The Spanish translation of her second, Making a Difference in Patients’ Lives: Emotional Experience in the Therapeutic Setting (Routledge, 2008) was published recently. Still Practicing: The Heartaches and Joys of a Clinical Career, (Routledge, 2012) examines shame, sorrow, and resilience during training and at subsequent stages of a clinical career. Understanding and Treating Patients in Clinical Psychoanalysis: Lessons from Literature (2015) uses short stories to explore problematic ways people deal with life’s fundamental challenges.

Psychoanalytic Reflections: Training and Practice is a book and collection of papers our field has long needed and awaited. Sandra Buechler is a most engaging companion, mentor and guide in this beautifully written and profoundly honest journey toward a psychoanalytic way of working, thinking and living. In passionate, yet clear and graceful language, she leads us through the pleasures and perils of the crafting and development of a genuine and rich psychoanalytic identity. With deep sensitivity to inner and outer struggle, we come to trust her highly original and personal reflections on becoming and being a psychoanalyst. With an unusual ease and grace, she weaves together the personal with the theoretical, the clinical with a profound love of literature, research on emotions with the evolution of a professional identity. In my opinion, there is no better introduction to the field for a young clinician nor a better refresher for an experienced one. The wide-ranging personal, ethical, clinical, and theoretical dimensions of Dr. Buechler’s writing stem from the very origins of our field and point to its future. This collection of papers ranging over almost 30 years of experience is highly recommended reading for us all.

–Paul Lipmman

Donna Orange:

This book is a treasure. Not only does Sandra Buechler teach us about training and supervision; she shows us, clearly and directly, what psychoanalysis is, as a vocation and as a way of life that matters, to those who teach it, to those who learn it, to those who seek it. This book is a gift for candidates-in-training and to their mentors, as well as to patients who wonder why people do this work. We learn that this work responds to a vocation, a passion.

Sandra Buechler is always refreshing, lively and completely genuine in her views. Psychoanalysis constantly needs such a fierce critic and at the same time, a fierce advocate.

–Elizabeth Hegeman Ph.D