In Session: The Bond Between Women and Their Therapists

In Session enters the consulting room and cuts straight to the heart of the psychotherapy relationship. Deborah Lott sought out the stories of nearly 300 women in therapy to provide this unprecedented perspective on the psychotherapy bond. What they told her dramatically reveals the dilemmas of being in a relationship that is at once so intimate yet so formally constrained. This first book to help women navigate the therapeutic alliance In Session offers guidance to those who panic at becoming attached to somebody whose time they must buy. It gives a voice to those who have sexual dreams about their therapist but are too uncomfortable to talk about them. Lott argues that the therapy bond is an "approximate relationship" that can only flourish within certain circumscribed boundaries. How these boundaries should be defined and honored is the subject of a debate that has been raging since the beginning of psychotherapy itself. Lott poses the hard questions: Why the discrepency between what therapists state publicly about boundaries and what they do in the sanctity of their offices? Can the imbalance of power in the relationship be equalized? To what extent can therapists "reparent" their clients? Lott brings to life the extraordinary story of first patient Anna O. whose intense attachment to her doctor Josef Breuer inspired Sigmund Freud to conceptualize transference a powerful founding tenet of psychoanalysis. She demonstrates how this notion and reactions against it have shaped therapeutic practice. But her major focus is on women in therapy today. These women whose stories are full of passion humor and pain are the true heroines of this remarkable book. An altogether original look at the dynamics of therapy-love In Session goes beyond a simplistic condemnation of sexual transgression to describe the complex gamult of clients feelings that surround these alliances. In the end In Session is a profound meditation on the nature of love and its boundaries in all human relationships. Each copy includes a Readers Guide which offers some provocative questions to think about and discuss.