In the Tracks of the Unseen

A memoir of conscience, trauma, healing, and individuation. The author describes the collision of the ethics of her profession with the ethics of love when she falls in love with one of her patients, a taboo and to date an untold story relegated to the silence of don't ask don't tell. In intimate portraits of personal analysis and analytic training that make key Jungian concepts understandable to readers new to Jungian psychology she documents the making of a Jungian analyst.

A memoir of conscience, trauma, healing, and individuation. The author describes the collision of the ethics of her profession with the ethics of love when she falls in love with one of her patients, a taboo and to date an untold story relegated to the silence of don't ask don't tell. In intimate portraits of personal analysis and analytic training that make key Jungian concepts understandable to readers new to Jungian psychology she documents the making of a Jungian analyst.

This memoir takes the reader along the psychological and spiritual edge in a narrative dedicated to truth as it collects the broken, the missing, the sweet and the bitter. In stories of interracial love, the challenges and joys of motherhood, the despair of sexual trauma, the wisdom of dreams and the deep connections made in psychoanalysis, Jane Davenport Platko shares the essence of her life.

"Jane Davenport Platko's book In the Tracks of the Unseen, Memoirs of a Jungian Psychoanalyst is of dizzying honesty. Davenport Platko vividly describes love, abuse and the healing mysteries of psychoanalysis. She openly struggles with the questions of boundaries and transgression in a way rarely available in psychotherapy literature. From her unflinching gaze we can all derive insights about our own moments of those life-altering ethical decisions required by love. This is a book that may result in strong feelings of approval or disapproval. But whatever our response, in her Tracks we are moved by the generosity in which she gives of her own life to help us see. A true gift. This is a rare view into the psychotherapeutic consulting room and an unnerving insight into the heart of a courageous woman."

Robert Bosnak, psychoanalyst and author. A Little Course in Dreams; Embodiment, Creative Imagination in Medicine Art and Travel.

"What a daring and authentic book this is. I love tales of transformation when there has been serious struggle and suffering to transcend. But this is more even than a compelling personal story. It asks us to consider rules and prejudice, the courage it takes to break rules and the unexpectedly positive outcome that is possible. I found it hard to put down."

Kim Chernin, Ph.D., award-winning author whose works include In My Mother's House, A Different Kind of Listening, and National Best Seller The Hungry Self.

"Platko has given us a carefully crafted and scrupulously honest account of how what is never supposed to happen between therapist and client does happen. In the Tracks of the Unseen is a quarry of information from which anyone interested in or involved in a doctor-patient relationship may draw understanding."

Susan Baur, The Intimate Hour: Love and Sex in Psychotherapy.

"Painfully honest and courageously revealing, this memoir exposes the true ground of analytic training: the hard-won knowledge of the therapist's own inner life."

Cornelia Dimmitt Ph.D., I.A.A.P., former President of the C.G. Jung Institute Boston.