The Fifty-Minute Hour

by Robert Mitchell Lindner and Robert Lindner

Book Overview

Five True Psychoanalytic Tales of Patients on the Edge This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385295189
• ISBN13: 9780385295185
• Release Date: September 1986
• Publisher: Delta
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

The paths of psychotherapy

I have been doing psychotherapy for years and always find it fascinating to see how childhood experiences lead to the development of problems. There are lots of books about the theories, but the actual cases always seem much more striking to me. This book is fun to read if you are interested in looking at these kind of connections. I wish there were more books about this, but the subject seems to be out of vogue these days although people still have as many psychogenic problems as ever. I don't particularly like the books that make case material like this too artistic and flowery; this book describes the characters to the point. The examples part of "The Road Less Traveled" was also good in the same way.

A Classic

I read the "The Fifty Minute Hour" in the 1960's and was particularly impressed by the chapter "The Jet Propelled Couch." In the mid 1990's I was telling my teenage daughter about the chapter and we went out and bought the book to see if dad remembered correctly. I did and she enjoyed the book as much as I did. It is a classic. I believe the scientist in "The Jet Propelled Couch" was at Los Alamos National Laboratory.The "Fifty Minute" comes from Freud. He advised therapists to reserve ten minutes to cool down after a session with a patient and to prepare for the next patient. In this post-Freudian era patients are seen back-to-back and the hour is fifty minutes to increase revenue, not to cool down. In fact the hour is now down to 40 minutes and even 30 with some doctors! Unfortunately Lindner's next book "Prescription for Rebellion" as I remember was a dud. Really disappointing let down after the FMH.

a true "psychological thriller!"

This is a great book for anyone interested in psychoanalysis, or just the human condition. The film Pressure Point with S. Poitier was based one of the case studies in this book. Solitaire, Laura's Story, is an early account of bulimia nervosa, which was not even a diagnosis given in those days. One thing to note, however....Rebel without a Cause, another book by Lindler, is about an antisocial young man....However, it was not the basis of the James Dean movie, as one reviewer wrote.

The Fifty Minute Hour

I highly recommend this book. The author tells about his most interesting patients and how he treated them. He takes you through each case as he is going through it, which I find facinating. He even acknowledges his fears and anxieties. I read this book years ago and still remember it fondly. I am anxious to read it again. I like the fact that the author writes as if he is an old friend telling you a series of mesmerizing stories. He also writes without a superiority complex, which I find refreshing.

Brilliant, provocative, quizzical....

I read it when it first came out. "The Jet-propelled Couch" is one of the most brilliant pieces of analysis-cum-imagination I have ever seen and perfectly fits this time. It gets more relevant as the years go by.