Founded on the in-depth discussion of sixteen clinical cases of psychoanalysis, this book answers the question of what psychoanalysts do when they are practicing psychoanalysis.
The authors have collaborated with over a thousand colleagues worldwide to collect a unique dataset of everyday clinical sessions, using a new workshop discussion method designed to reveal differences. Faced with diversity and wanting to surface and understand it, they had to evolve a new theoretical framework. This framework covers different approaches to the analytic situation (using the metaphors of cinema, dramatic monologue, theater, and immersive theater): different sources of data to infer unconscious content; differences in the troubles patients unconsciously experience and how to approach them; and differences in when, about what, and how a psychoanalyst should talk.
Taking the form of eleven very practical questions for psychoanalysts to ask of each session they conduct, the framework helps experienced psychoanalysts and students alike determine their intention and independently assess their progress. A final chapter applies the new framework and practical questions to contemporary technical controversies with some surprising results.

David Tuckett is a Distinguished Fellow and Training and Supervising Analyst at the British Psychoanalytic Society and Emeritus Professor of Decision-Making at University College London (UCL). He is a practicing psychoanalyst as well as Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and was the founding editor of the New Library of Psychoanalysis. He has served as Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, President of the European Psychoanalytic Federation, Board member of the International Psychoanalytic Association and Chair of the Comparative Clinical Methods working party. He has contributed books and journal articles in the fields of medical sociology, economics and cognitive science and developed and published articles in leading journals on Conviction Narrative Theory - a theory of choice under uncertainty, which combines psychoanalytic, neuroscientific, sociological, and economic insights to understand decision making under uncertainty and its wider effects on society, such as in the creation of financial crises. He gave a TED lecture at the University of Warwick and spoke at significant policy-making events such as the Davos Forum as well as publishing on monetary and financial stability policy in the staff working papers series of the Bank of England. He has twice received the Sigourney Award for contributions to psychoanalysis.