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    Home Authors Nina Coltart Slouching towards Bethlehem …and Further Psychoanalytical Explorations
    Journal of Psychological Therapies: Volume 1 Number 2 £6.99 – £16.99
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    Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in China: Volume 2 £18.74 – £26.99

    Slouching towards Bethlehem …and Further Psychoanalytical Explorations

    Author: Nina Coltart

    £18.89 – £28.99

    Nina Coltart‘s first classic work reissued with a brand-new foreword by Dr A. H. Brafman. The book contains numerous vivid clinical studies, such as “The Treatment of a Transvestite”, “The Analysis of an Elderly Patient”, and “The Silent Patient”, and brought well-deserved attention to Nina Coltart and her ideas.

    *Special offers* We are offering the following fantastic deals for fans of Nina Coltart’s work: buy all three print books together for £50! That’s a saving of £21.97! Or if you’d rather have the e-books, it’s £37.78 – a saving of £14.39. Or, if you’d like them all in both formats, take advantage of our special ‘bundle’ deals and buy all six for £60.00 – a saving of £19.97! Just place them all in your basket and the discount will be taken automatically.

    Take a look at her other two classic books: The Baby and the Bathwater and How to Survive as a Psychotherapist

    Author

    Nina Coltart

    ISBN

    9781912691432

    Format

    Paperback, e-Book, Print & e-Book

    Page Extent

    224

    Publication Date

    November 2020

    Subject Areas

    Psychoanalysis, Psychotherapy

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    • Description
    • About the author
    • Contents
    Description

    In 1982, Nina Coltart gave a paper to the English-Speaking Conference of Psychoanalysts called “Slouching towards Bethlehem … or Thinking the Unthinkable in Psychoanalysis”, which created a stir and brought her to the attention of the psychoanalytic community. Ten years later, she produced her first book – this book – which contained her seminal paper, alongside so many others of note.

    Full of eloquent, meaningful, and provocative clinical stories – including “The Treatment of a Transvestite”, “What Does It Mean: ‘Love Is Not Enough?’”, “The Analysis of an Elderly Patient”, and “The Silent Patient” – Nina Coltart exposes the full truth of the therapeutic process, where the analyst may occasionally stray from orthodox practice but how such lapses can sometimes provide unforeseen breakthroughs in treatment.

    This volume introduced Coltart’s characteristic style of journeying through important issues in analytic practice. She elaborates on the use of intuition, the “special” attention required by an analyst, the value of silence, and of humour, and the importance of psychosomatic processes – the way the body speaks through psychosomatic symptoms. All vitally relevant today and positively groundbreaking at the time.

    Each chapter within is a gem to the practising and trainee therapist. Whether you agree with all Nina Coltart says or not, her unflinching depiction of therapeutic practice demands a response and stimulates a conscious and considered re-evaluation of the accepted psychoanalytic conventions. A provocative read you won’t want to miss.

    About the author

    About the author

    Nina Coltart was “one of the most admired and liked psychoanalysts in Britain. For 35 years she was an active member of the British and international psychoanalytic community and she played a major role in extending the influence of analytic ideas outside that world.” (A. H. Brafman, “Obituary: Nina Coltart”, Independent, 18 August 1997)

    She was born in London in 1927 and passed away in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire in 1997. She read Modern Languages at Somerville College, Oxford, but went on to train as a doctor, qualifying in 1957 at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. After qualification, she worked as a psychiatrist but found more interest in her patients’ emotions and experiences than medical conditions. Thus, in 1961, she set up in private practice as a psychotherapist, concurrently training as a psychoanalyst with the British Psychoanalytical Society. She qualified in 1964 as an associate member, became a full member in 1969, and a training analyst in the Independent Group in 1971.

    A dynamic representative of the international psychoanalytic community, teaching and lecturing and also helping to administer various psychotherapy trainings, Dr Coltart went beyond the usual confines to bring analytic ideas to the wider world. She taught extensively for the British Society on a series of courses, especially those concerned with questions of assessment and analysability. She built up an extensive consultation and referral service, concentrating on diagnosis and assessment for analytical therapy and for psychoanalysis. From 1972 to 1982, she was Director of the London Clinic, which interviews and assesses potential training cases for students of the British Society. She was Vice-President of the British Society and Chairman of its Board and Council from 1984 to 1987. She retired in 1994.

    Dr Coltart published numerous papers in psychotherapy journals and three books: Slouching Towards Bethlehem… And Further Psychoanalytic Explorations (1992), How to Survive as a Psychotherapist (1993), and The Baby and the Bathwater (1996), which are all reissued by Phoenix.

    Contents

    Contents

    Acknowledgements
    About the author
    Foreword by A. H. Brafman
    Introduction

    1 Slouching towards Bethlehem… or thinking the unthinkable in psychoanalysis
    2 Diagnosis and assessment for suitability for psychoanalytic psychotherapy
    3 The treatment of a transvestite
    4 The superego, anxiety and guilt
    5 Sin and the superego: man and his conscience in society
    6 The silent patient
    7 On the tightrope: therapeutic and non-therapeutic factors in psychoanalysis
    8 What does it mean: ‘love is not enough’?
    9 Manners makyth man: true or false?
    10 The analysis of an elderly patient
    11 The practice of psychoanalysis and Buddhism
    12 Attention

    References
    Index

    2 reviews for Slouching towards Bethlehem …and Further Psychoanalytical Explorations

    1. Amazon review: John Wayne, March 2021 – 21/12/2021

      5/5 stars: Recommended read for those interested in Psychotherapy
      As part of my continuous development in my work as a psychotherapist I found this book very helpful and thought provoking. It’s written without jargon and I think accessible to anyone studying psychotherapy or psychoanalysis.

    2. Spyros D. Orfanos, PhD, ABPP, The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2023, 83, (594–601) – 19/08/2024

      ‘Coltart wrote about her clinical work with honesty and brilliance. She wrote with a spoken flair of expression and kept technical language to a minimum. […] Coltart tells us not to be afraid to make the psychoanalytic writing personal and readable. When one looks at the explosion of psychoanalytic journals and digital outlets, this writing style is on the ascent and owes much to Coltart. How such an independent psychoanalyst and creative writer arose from a rather stiff British Psychoanalytic Society is a mystery. But she might retort, that is why we love psychoanalysis because even if we are slouching towards our own personal Bethlehems we are moving closer to the heart of thinking the unthinkable.’

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