Reports From the Front: Clinical Case Writing as Journalism

Abstract

Psychoanalytic scrutiny of clinical case reports is a paradigm of psychoanalytic investigation. A kind of journalistic reporting from our psychoanalytic front lines is described as a way to share with colleagues some of our ongoing struggles as we work with challenging patients. We need to report our difficult cases in such a way that colleagues can get emotionally inside them and learn from them. We need to take the pressure off colleagues to only report what they understand well. The reporting of not fully understood problem cases is encouraged. Case reports can then become puzzles for colleagues to ponder together.