How does a psychoanalysis begin? What goes on when analyst and prospective analysand meet for the first time, and what processes are activated to make the project for an analysis possible?

This unique contribution to the surprisingly sparse literature on this most essential aspect of the psychoanalytical practitioner’s work, is the clinical companion to Initiating Psychoanalysis: Perspectives, also part of the ‘Teaching’ Series of the New Library of Psychoanalysis. Replete with clinical illustrations, this book is based on the findings of an ambitious research project on first interviews carried out from 2004 to 2016 by an international group of psychoanalysts, the Working Party on Initiating Psychoanalysis (WPIP) of the European Psychoanalytic Federation. The authors, all members of the Investigative Team, are senior psychoanalysts from member societies of the European Psychoanalytic Federation, all with extensive experience in the practice and teaching of psychoanalytic consultation.

Psychoanalysts and analytic therapists, in particular those in training or setting up their practice, will find Beginning Analysis to be essential reading in deepening their understanding of how analysand and analyst arrive at the decision to begin analysis.