Paul Williams, in this beautifully written set of essays, manages to achieve something extraordinary: He succeeds in conveying the essential core of the psychoanalytic treatment of severe emotional disturbances. He shows the reader how he goes about the difficult task of locating psychologically the embers of the almost extinguished humanity of the patient, and of finding a way to enter into conversation with the patient on subjects that include the desolation resulting from the patient's severed human connection with himself and others. No one writing today brings to life as well as Williams the process of forging a genuine human connection with psychotic patients (and the psychotic aspect of healthier patients), and in doing so, helping to restore the patient's connection with his own humanity - a connection that is the foundation of sanity. - Thomas H. Ogden, M.D., author, Rediscovering Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2008)
In this remarkable book, Paul Williams assembles a wide-ranging array of essays that derive from his experience as a psychoanalyst, anthropologist, and writer. He has long experience in helping psychiatrists to understand the severely psychotic patient, and as such his clinical skill simply leaps off the page. The breadth and depth of Williams' writing will ensure a wide readership of this unusual and important work. - Murray Jackson, M.D., Emeritus Consultant Psychiatrist/Psychoanalyst, Maudsley Hospital and Institute of Psychiatry, London
Drawing on his background as an anthropologist and his training as a psychoanalyst, Paul Williams describes how the search for meaning in human experience is the central quest of his work with his patients. The suffering individual, especially those suffering crippling psychotic anxieties, are at the core of his preoccupations, and his endeavor is to reach and treat them. This requires a continuous search for self-knowledge and a capacity to engage deeply in human relationships. In the compelling accounts of his clinical examples, one can see Williams at work, facilitating the transformation of his patients' disturbances into ordinary humanity. The book also develops his thoughts on potential space and the use of the analyst as a third in the process of enabling symbolization of the object. This is a profound and deeply moving book that I highly recommend. - Rosine Perelberg, Ph.D., author, Time, Space, and Phantasy (Routledge, 2009)
Paul Williams' new book is an inspirational tour de force into the subtleties and complexities of human nature. The links and connections that Williams makes between the symbolic and the nonsymbolic, the psychotic and the ordinary, and the individual and the collective are his main contributions. Clinicians and social researchers alike, who are seriously interested in grasping and comprehending the humanity of people and the elusiveness of psychopathology, will find the book a must to investigate and a pleasure to read. - Leon Kleimberg, B.A., Training Analyst, British Psychoanalytical Society
Not since Herbert Rosenfeld's pioneering application of psychoanalytic understanding to regressed psychotic states 50 years ago has such a comprehensive and convincing effort as Invasive Objects been made, applying present-day object relations theory to the apparently chaotic, confusing, and devastating regressive transferences of schizophrenic patients. Williams illustrates in great detail his psychoanalytic work with borderline and psychotic patients, and the open, candid communication of the painful, unavoidably complex countertransference developments that this work entails provides additional depth to the clinical chapters. The second part of the book further enriches the clinical contributions with a broad theoretical frame, and a call for action to improve the treatment within institutional settings of the most severly ill psychiatric patients. This book is warmly recommended to all professionals dedicated to the psychotherapeutic care of severe personality disorders and the psychotic spectrum of psychiatric illness. - Otto F. Kernberg, M.D., University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell
A profound humanity comes through in Williams's work and is characteristic of his relationship with his patients. - The Journal of Analytical Psychology, 56, 2011
I anticipate that readers of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy will find much in this book that will leave them enriched and that it will have made them reflect on their own ideas and practice and be useful in their daily work even if this is not full analysis. - Brian Martindale, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, Vol 25, No 2, June 2011
Paul Williams, in this beautifully written set of essays, manages to achieve something extraordinary: He succeeds in conveying the essential core of the psychoanalytic treatment of severe emotional disturbances. He shows the reader how he goes about the difficult task of locating psychologically the embers of the almost extinguished humanity of the patient, and of finding a way to enter into conversation with the patient on subjects that include the desolation resulting from the patient's severed human connection with himself and others. No one writing today brings to life as well as Williams the process of forging a genuine human connection with psychotic patients (and the psychotic aspect of healthier patients), and in doing so, helping to restore the patient's connection with his own humanity - a connection that is the foundation of sanity. - Thomas H. Ogden, M.D., author, Rediscovering Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2008)
In this remarkable book, Paul Williams assembles a wide-ranging array of essays that derive from his experience as a psychoanalyst, anthropologist, and writer. He has long experience in helping psychiatrists to understand the severely psychotic patient, and as such his clinical skill simply leaps off the page. The breadth and depth of Williams' writing will ensure a wide readership of this unusual and important work. - Murray Jackson, M.D., Emeritus Consultant Psychiatrist/Psychoanalyst, Maudsley Hospital and Institute of Psychiatry, London
Drawing on his background as an anthropologist and his training as a psychoanalyst, Paul Williams describes how the search for meaning in human experience is the central quest of his work with his patients. The suffering individual, especially those suffering crippling psychotic anxieties, are at the core of his preoccupations, and his endeavor is to reach and treat them. This requires a continuous search for self-knowledge and a capacity to engage deeply in human relationships. In the compelling accounts of his clinical examples, one can see Williams at work, facilitating the transformation of his patients' disturbances into ordinary humanity. The book also develops his thoughts on potential space and the use of the analyst as a third in the process of enabling symbolization of the object. This is a profound and deeply moving book that I highly recommend. - Rosine Perelberg, Ph.D., author, Time, Space, and Phantasy (Routledge, 2009)
Paul Williams' new book is an inspirational tour de force into the subtleties and complexities of human nature. The links and connections that Williams makes between the symbolic and the nonsymbolic, the psychotic and the ordinary, and the individual and the collective are his main contributions. Clinicians and social researchers alike, who are seriously interested in grasping and comprehending the humanity of people and the elusiveness of psychopathology, will find the book a must to investigate and a pleasure to read. - Leon Kleimberg, B.A., Training Analyst, British Psychoanalytical Society
Not since Herbert Rosenfeld's pioneering application of psychoanalytic understanding to regressed psychotic states 50 years ago has such a comprehensive and convincing effort as Invasive Objects been made, applying present-day object relations theory to the apparently chaotic, confusing, and devastating regressive transferences of schizophrenic patients. Williams illustrates in great detail his psychoanalytic work with borderline and psychotic patients, and the open, candid communication of the painful, unavoidably complex countertransference developments that this work entails provides additional depth to the clinical chapters. The second part of the book further enriches the clinical contributions with a broad theoretical frame, and a call for action to improve the treatment within institutional settings of the most severly ill psychiatric patients. This book is warmly recommended to all professionals dedicated to the psychotherapeutic care of severe personality disorders and the psychotic spectrum of psychiatric illness. - Otto F. Kernberg, M.D., University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell
A profound humanity comes through in Williams's work and is characteristic of his relationship with his patients. - The Journal of Analytical Psychology
...each chapter can be enjoyed in its own right...There were a number of chapters that I found myself particularly enthralled by... I anticipate that readers will find much in this book that will leave them enriched and that it will have made them reflect on their own ideas and practice and be useful in their daily work. - Brian Martindale, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
