The electrified tightrope

This text is about the capacity to experience of both the therapist and the patient. It asks how this capacity can be sustained and discusses the many blunt and subtle ways it can be sabotaged. The title of the book refers to the shocking tension due to conflict between poise and catastrophe in the therapeutic situation. Eigen illustrates that when a person says or does something new or startling to someone who is listening and watching with sympathetic understanding, the rewards can be great for the analyst and for the analysand. The request for help and to be treated differently from the way one has been previously treated challenges the ability of the therapist to respond in the new way that he discovered during his own training. Eigen's detailed afterword gives details of the development and training that led to his work in America as a psychologist involved in the developing interest in analytic training. Although interested in the influence of Freud and the early European analysts, Eigen examines, in more detail, the occurences in Britain since Melanie Klein began her work there. His references to Klein, Winnicott, Milner and Bion help connect the reader to his background tolerance of the complex relationships between instincts and their many derivatives, especially the interrelationships between individuals' development and their most significant others. This leads to attempts to understand transference and counter-transference relationships. Eigen's insistence on using the continually developing themes as they appear in free association is illustrated.