Danger and Defense

Book excerpt: Over the past twenty years, Paul Gray's contributions to the literature of psychoanalytic technique have had a profound effect on the world of psychoanalysis. Stirring up enormous interest and controversy about the central and most necessary part of technique, his papers have illuminated one of the least discussed and least well-conceptualized aspects of psychoanalysis: how the analyst listens. This collection of original papers elucidates and extends the use of the technique he has called close process attention. Several chapters demonstrate the result of adjusting the analyst's perceptual focus so as to observe data essentially limited to inside the analytic situation - that is, how the analyst listens - as well as the result of minimizing the use of suggestion and persuasion to avoid preempting the patient's ego function. In short, these chapters illustrate how Gray has provided a means for improving patients' capacities for self-observation and self-analysis.