Patients enter treatment with the hope of being recognized and the hope for transformation of a painful experience. David Shaddock shows how poetry can guide psychoanalysts towards meeting that hope. The book is based on the proposition that an accurate recognition of what is leads to the opening of what could be. The imaginative space that opens between poem and reader or therapist and patient can be a place of healing and transformation.

Poetry and Psychoanalysis will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists interested in using literature and creativity as inspiration for both their clinical work and personal growth, as well as all who love poetry.