Reading this double volume of the collected writings of Josette ten Have-de Labije and Rob Nerborsky, one comes to be impressed. The books offer a wide variety of reflections on, and interpretations of, Davanloo's teachings. They are full of wonderful ideas and, even more importantly, full of the authors' personal interpretations and wisdom on how to bring these ideas into fruitful therapeutic praxis.
The project of co-publishing the two authors' collected writings emphasizes their close collaboration and kinship. Nevertheless there are also differences of scope. Josette and Rob differ in their emphases and priorities. For Josette the major goal seems to be the elaboration of Davanloo's work in terms of more specific criteria for recognizing behavioral cues and in terms of more specific descriptions of therapeutic technique. For Rob the major goal seems to be a theoretical reflection on issues of attachment and loss. This is not just a theoretical hobby; it is a way of founding and justifying his attachment-based approach to ISTDP.
''Rob's emphasis is upon attachment and object relations. His theoretical remarks on the Klein-Bowlby issues are of particular importance. Take the 're-united Klein-Bowlby camp' (p. R-121). It is that current events and persons on the one hand, and on the other hand the archetypical unconscious phantasies and psychological needs of the infants may meet and mix up in the etiology of neurosis. Such meeting enables real life to become a locus of truly new and truly deep experiences that affect old objects and old relationships, and, vice versa, a locus where old issues may influence current experiences and affects. If this has been Davanloo's original idea, it is at least Rob's focus: '[Davanloo] has unknowingly healed the split between Klein and Bowlby by integrating the role of actual relationship into the pathology of the superego' (p. R-121). These ideas help the therapist to move freely between current, past and transferential issues, link and allude to them together, and weave metaphorical relations between them. And this is what Rob is demonstrating in his vignettes and what makes up the fluidity of mind that constitutes the core of his craft.
''Another important contribution Rob makes is the differentiation between shame and guilt. This text, I think, is among the best of original theorizing presented in our field of EDT. As a result of pointing out that shame originates from a developmental stage earlier than guilt, we may come to deal with a patient's shame differently, as an anticipation of (projected) social expulsion (p. R-92), rather than as the regular superego issue. Josette's project is to offer a practical way of applying Davanloo's concepts, to add empirical criteria, both for diagnosis and for therapeutic technique, so that the practitioner's work may be guided by more and easier empirical tokens and by concepts that are defined more in detail. She uses the term 'maintaining Davanloo's discovery' in the title of several papers. Her major commitment is to describe executable steps for the various aspects of his technique, and to describe observation criteria ('operationalizations') for the theoretical concepts, so that theory and technique can be practiced better and taught better. This culminates in a variety of schemas and schedules, the most famous of which is known as the 'red and green traffic lights' (p. J-105), a detailed flow chart of decision criteria and feedback loops of action steps.
''In conclusion, in this twin volume these two major proponents of ISTDP allow us to enter into their workplaces and have us watch the thoughts, the tools, and the instruments as they are using them. Thank you, Josette and Rob!'' --Arno Goudsmit, PhD, 1 February 2016 By IEDTA Website