Learning from Life: Becoming a Psychoanalyst

All of life can be a resource for our learning. In his fourth and most personal book, Patrick Casement attempts to understand what he has learned from life, sharing a wide range of those experiences that have helped shape the analyst he has become.

Patrick Casement shares various incidents in his life to demonstrate how these helped lay a foundation for his subsequent understanding of psychoanalysis. These examples from his life and work are powerful and at times very moving, but always filled with hope and compassion.

This unique book gives a fascinating insight into fundamental questions concerning the acquisition of analytic wisdom and how personal experiences shape the analyst's approach to clinical work. It will be of great interest to all psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists.

Patrick Casement has been a psychoanalyst and therapist in full-time private practice for many years, having previously been a social worker. He is author of On Learning from the Patient and Further Learning from the Patient. His last book Learning from Our Mistakes received a Gradiva award for its contribution to psychoanalysis.