"I’m very happy to say I really really do love psychoanalysis. I think the insights are absolutely genius and I don’t think that I would be able to do any of my work if I didn’t have those ideas readily available to me."
In
Bombs in the Consulting Room: Surviving Psychological Shrapnel (Routledge 2019), Professor
Brett Kahr takes us on a tour de force through the rough fringes of clinical practice. He portrays his work with forensic and non-verbal patients, with sado-masochistic couples and deeply disturbed individuals. He is a true champion of the lost art of interpretation in the face of extremely challenging behaviour in the consulting room and treats us to gems of insight gathered from decades of clinical experience and in-depth study of the history of the field.
The book and the interview will be of great interest to clinicians working in independent or institutional settings with the most threatening and vulnerable patients.
Sebastian Thrul is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in training in Germany and Switzerland. He can be reached at sebastian.thrul@gmx.de.