Fighting for Love: Journal of a Training Analysis

Fighting for Love: Journal of a Training Analysis is a unique account of an eight-year psychoanalysis, journaled and retrospectively annotated from the patient’s perspective in the aftermath of a traumatic dissociation. This book tells the story of that analysis in two parts.

Part One, The Awakening, places the analysis in its dynamic and historical context and sets the stage for the analysis. A survivor of a Japanese concentration camp in Indonesia in WWII, parental loss and recurrent abandonments as a child, Goldsmith takes the reader deep into the pain she repressed and dissociated. Part One incorporates important components of the analysis, such as its ‘signal dream’, within the narrative. Part Two, The Analysis, is an edited version of Goldsmith’s original journal with retrospective and expository comments inserted, documenting the evolution of the transference and the relationship with her analyst. With the help and love of her analyst, the author was able to find the words she did not have as a child and feel the feelings she could not feel before.

This book will resonate with anyone who has experienced trauma and offers insight to those who treat its aftermath. Psychoanalytic professionals in practice and training, including psychotherapists and counselors, will find this book compelling, as will readers interested in the psychoanalytic process.