Fedunina N.Yu. Book review. John Steiner “Seeing and Being Seen: Emerging from a Psychic Retreat”, 2011

The article presents an overview of John Steiner's book, in which he develops his concept of “mental asylum”. This time, the main topic of reflection is what a person faces in life and therapy, who risks leaving his protective organization, which relieved feelings of dependence, anxiety and experiencing mental pain, which gave feelings of narcissistic superiority and control over the object. Steiner shows the complexity of this process, painful feelings of embarrassment, shame, vulnerability, humiliation, envy, fear of exposure, when, outside the “walls” of the shelter, a person turns out to be “visible” to others, and also sees others more realistically himself. The acuteness of these feelings may be such that the patient may strive for their relief rather than understanding, and again risks returning to the narcissistic protection of the pathological organization, based on primitive defense mechanisms of splitting, projective identification, omnipotence, denial of loss, differences or separateness. John Steiner illustrates various aspects of the process of leaving the mental asylum on the material of clinical cases, as well as on the material of the analysis of famous cases and fragments of fiction. In connection with this process, the topics of the structure of the Oedipal situation, the experience of loss and the complexity of the process of grieving, envy, revenge, power and domination, compulsion to repeat, substitution of some feelings by others are discussed. Throughout the book, Steiner also examines the countertransference experiences and reactions of a therapist who is co-present with a client pursuing this difficult path, and formulates therapeutic consequences to help such clients.

Key words: psychic retreat, psychoanalysis, John Steiner

For citation: Fedunina, N.Yu. (2023). Book review. John Steiner “Seeing and Being Seen: Emerging from a Psychic Retreat”, 2011. New Psychological Research, No. 2, 113–121. DOI: 10.51217/npsyresearch_2023_03_02_06