Publisher's Synopsis
This book spells out exactly what happens within the personality when psychotherapy is successful. Much of the answer has long been written between the lines of Freud's seminal works, awaiting their coming together and integration. The book considers what changes within various psychic systems and how these are functions of the underlying disorders are spelled out for neurotic, borderline and psychotic illnesses. The result is the identification of another vein of ore in Freud's ideas that clarifies the healing aspects of his model, and adds a new level of precision to the therapeutic process.
Freud's writings on the nature of healing and growth take second place to his ideas on the structure of the personality and pathology. His well-defined ideas on the mechanism of healing and growth are scattered across his writings and rarely, if ever, drawn together into a unified presentation. His following has deeply explored the meanings of his seminal ideas when it comes to theory and practice, but is short in the area of what actually takes place within successful psychotherapy. This text's effort to gather up and unify his thoughts in this area results in both theoretical and therapeutic gains, the former for clarifications of how various psychic systems function within healing and growth, and the latter because of a more exact identification of the signs of it.
