Playing at Work: Clinical Essays in a Contemporary Winnicottian Perspective on Technique

Playing at Work offers a thorough guide to the innovative psychoanalytic practices of Vincenzo Bonaminio, as he draws on the work of Winnicott, Bollas, and Tustin to demonstrate an effective method for working with adults, adolescents, and children in clinical settings.

Using several clinical cases, the book explores central psychoanalytic concepts such as transference and countertransference, identity and self, embodiment, anxiety, and the role of parental influence on psychic development. By providing extended commentary on his case material, Bonaminio illustrates the significance of writing about clinical practice to the development of techniques that address patients' varying needs. Simultaneously, this text offers a method that cultivates each patient's capacity for intuition and the use of metaphor to form their own interpretations, and thereby invests a sense of freedom into the analytic situation.

By its deeply reflective insights, and its emphasis on the contribution made by the analyst as an active participant in the therapeutic situation, Playing at Work forms essential reading for all practicing psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists who wish to improve their clinical practice with patients of any age.