Poetry and Psychoanalysis

"Poetry and Psychoanalysis: The Opening of the Field does, in fact, open our field. It opens our capacity to use our imagination in our work, indeed our lives, as psychotherapists. Poetry is the key to that opening. In Shaddock's hand the poetry is not "applied" to therapy, rather it inspires."

- Malcolm Owen Slavin, Ph.D, author of forthcoming Original Loss: Grieving Existential Trauma in Art and the Art of Psychoanalysis (Routledge)

"I wouldn't have imagined I could read a book that would teach me something new both about psychoanalysis (especially about how the analyst listens) and about poets I have lived with for decades, Dante, Blake. Everyone interested in either poetry or psychoanalysis should read this book."

- Alan Williamson, Warren Wilson College, author of Franciscan Notes and Almost a Girl: Male Writers and Female Identification

"In Poetry and Psychoanalysis: The Opening of the Field, David Shaddock reveals the unexpected kinship between clinical psychoanalysis and the art of poetry. In both, a speaker (poet or patient) speaks intimately to an other (therapist or reader) the deepest experiences of the heart. In both, meaning is carried in sounds, rhythms, memories and dreams. In both, expression is the medium of transformation. In this marvelous book, Shaddock, poet and psychoanalyst, reveals how such transformation comes to be."

- Jeffrey Stern, Ph.D, literary critic, Training and Supervising Analyst, Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute

"Poetry and Psychoanalysis: The Opening of the Field does, in fact, open our field. It opens our capacity to use our imagination in our work, indeed our lives, as psychotherapists. Poetry is the key to that opening. In Shaddock's hand the poetry is not 'applied' to therapy, rather it inspires."

- Malcolm Owen Slavin, Ph.D., author of forthcoming Original Loss: Grieving Existential Trauma in Art and the Art of Psychoanalysis

"I wouldn't have imagined I could read a book that would teach me something new both about psychoanalysis (especially about how the analyst listens) and about poets I have lived with for decades, Dante, Blake. Everyone interested in either poetry or psychoanalysis should read this book."

- Alan Williamson, Warren Wilson College, author of Franciscan Notes and Almost a Girl: Male Writers and Female Identification

"In Poetry and Psychoanalysis: The Opening of the Field, David Shaddock reveals the unexpected kinship between clinical psychoanalysis and the art of poetry. In both, a speaker (poet or patient) speaks intimately to an other (therapist or reader) the deepest experiences of the heart. In both, meaning is carried in sounds, rhythms, memories and dreams. In both, expression is the medium of transformation. In this marvelous book, Shaddock, poet and psychoanalyst, reveals how such transformation comes to be."

- Jeffrey Stern, Ph.D., literary critic, Training and Supervising Analyst, Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute

"As a guide to the possible relationship between poetry and psychoanalysis David Shaddock's book certainly stimulates further reading and reflection.
In the end, it is the method created by David Shaddock in Poetry and Psychoanalysis that is most valuable. The three-way relationship he sets up between the poems he chooses to read, the theoretical basis of his psychotherapy practice, and the accounts from his clinical work is what can be taken forward by diverse readers."

- Dr. Dominic McLoughlin, Psychodynamic Practice