"Psychic Retreats" discusses the problem of patients who have withdrawn to avoid anxiety and mental pain and with whom it is difficult to make meaningful contact. Using current Kleinian theory, experienced psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Steiner examines how these retreats are constructed and how analysis can treat them. He examines the way object relationships and defenses can be organized into complex structures which lead to a personality and an analysis becoming rigid and stuck, with little opportunity for development or change. These systems of defenses are pathological organizations of the personality: John Steiner describes them as psychic retreats', into which the patient can withdraw to avoid contact both with the analyst and reality.
"Psychic Retreats" is written with practicing psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in mind, the emphasis is therefore clinical throughout the book, which concludes with a chapter on the technical problems which arise in the treatment of such severely ill patients.