Coetzee J M - The Good Story: Exchanges on Truth, Fiction and Psychotherapy

The exchanges that follow are about the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and what that practice means in a wider social and philosophical sphere. They touch on psychic processes, in individuals and in groups, both inside and outside of the clinical setting. Given that in our secular age and in the Western world psychotherapy and the ideal of personal growth have become part of the Zeitgeist, we hope that they will also be felt to be relevant to readers beyond the borders of the therapeutic profession.

The exchanges are premised on the idea that something is to be gained by a therapist exploring their practice in the company of an outsider to the discipline of psychology, in this case a sympathetically disposed writer and literary critic. On the face of it the psychotherapist and the novelist have much in common, at least in terms of the focus of their interest. Human nature and human experience concern them both deeply, as do possibilities of growth and development.

Language is the working medium of both writers and psychotherapists. Both are occupied with the exploration, description and analysis of human experience, with finding or inventing linguistic and narrative structures within which to contain experience, and with the outer limits of experience.

The intellectual engagement reflected in these exchanges commenced in 2008, and reflects (on the one side) the interest of a therapist struck by a body of novelistic work in which internal processes are conveyed from a point of view that is radically different from a psychotherapeutic one (for instance, the terse, energetic account of Michael Ks mental resistance to oppression in Life & Times of Michael K); and (on the other side) the interest of a writer in deepening his understanding of a post-religious form of therapeutic dialogue.

This book is the second product of this engagement. The first appeared under the title Nevertheless, my sympathies are with the Karamazovs in the journal Salmagundi, nos. 166167 (2010), pp. 3972.

These exchanges are offered in an interdisciplinary spirit, as well as in a spirit of exploration. They do not always follow a linear train of thought. They sometimes repeat and contradict themselves, they return to insistent preoccupations, they pursue lines of thinking without always knowing where they will lead all of this in the hope that they may here and there open a new or unusual perspective on the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and on the psychotherapeutic project in its wider social forms.

The authors wish to acknowledge the following for their helpful comments on drafts of the exchanges and/or for valuable discussion of relevant ideas: Nick Everett, Jillian Vites, Orna Hadary, Margot Waddell and Daisy Evans.

AK & JMC

Details in the clinical examples used in the exchanges have been changed to protect the anonymity of patients. The option of disguising material rather than obtaining consent from patients has been chosen because of the risk of intrusion into the therapeutic process.

Terms in bold are defined in the Glossary. Asterisks direct the reader to the References.