Practical Psychoanalysis for Therapists and Patients

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Overall, Owen Renik, M.D., has presented us with a veryuseful, though very provocative, casebook, clearly and explicitlychallenging many time-honored tenets of psychoanalytictreatment as taught and practiced in Freudian-based institutes.In the process, Dr. Renik provides ways of approaching patientsuffering with a goal of symptom relief, neither expecting nornecessitating that insight will ever be achieved by the patient,and seeing that goal as somewhat of an extra benefit, if it isachieved at all. Although there is no problem if achieving insighthelps a particular patient, here Dr. Renik directly challengesthat which has been long considered to reflect oneaspect, one valuable tenet of that treatment that has come to becalled psychoanalysis.’ ‹