1st Edition
Psychoanalysis at the Crossroads An International Perspective
In this clear and thoughtful book, an international group of distinguished authors explore the central issues and future directions facing psychoanalytic theory and practice.
The book explores four main questions in the development of psychoanalysis: what psychoanalysis is as an endeavour now and what it may be in the future; the effect of social issues on psychoanalysis and of psychoanalysis on social issues, such as race and gender; the importance of psychoanalytic institutes on shaping future psychoanalytic theory and practice; and the likely major issues that will be shaping psychoanalysis in years to come.
Including contributions from within every school of psychoanalytic thought, this book is essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists and all who are curious about the future directions of the profession.
Introduction
Fred Busch
Part One: What is Basic in Psychoanalytic Technique and Theory?
1. Waking a Sleeping Beauty
Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau
2. New Forms of Psychopathology in a Changing World: a Challenge for Psychoanalysis in the Twenty-First Century
Stefano Bolognini
3. A Turn Towards or a Turn Away? Why and How Resistance to Unbearable Ideas Evoked in the Analyst's Presence Must be the Cornerstone of Psychoanalytic Work
David Tuckett
4. The Relational Unconscious: A Core Element of Intersubjectivity, Thirdness, and Clinical Process
Samuel Gerson
5. How to Grow a Psychoanalytic Forest: A Challenge Going Forward
Fred Busch
6. Affirming: "That's Not Psychoanalysis!": On the Value of the Politically Incorrect Act of Attempting to Define the Limits of our Field
Rachel Blass
7. Psychoanalysis and its Future: Destiny at the Crossroads
Arthur Leonoff
8. Technique at the Crossroads
Cecilio Paniagua
9. Those Who Listen
Harvey Schwartz
10. Crossroads, Cloverleaf Overpass, or Skein: The Relationship Between Some Neurocognitive Research and the Development of the Unconscious Mind
Allanah Furlong
Part Two: Psychoanalysis and Social Issues
11. Difference: Our Legacy and Our Future
Harriet Wolfe
12. Conviction, Lies and Denialism: Psychoanalytic Reflections
Roosevelt Cassorla
13. First Do No Harm
David Bell
14. On Whiteness, Racial Rhetoric, Identity Politics, and Critical Race Theory: A Critical Moment in American Psychoanalysis
Jon Mills
Part Three: The Role of Psychoanalytic Institutes
15. The Training and Supervising Analyst System in the United States, Current Issues
Eric Marcus
16. Why Does Psychoanalytic Education Cause Such Dissension?
Alan Sugarman
17. Psychoanalytic Institutes and their Discontents
H. Schmuel Erlich
18. A Perspective from Buenos Aires
Abel Fainstein
Part Four: New Directions
19. The Self as Mental Agent: Explorations of a Long-Neglected Concept
Werner Bohleber
20. Another Perspective on Dreams: The Dream as an Experience
Stefano Bolognini
21. Intersections Between the Feminine and the Infantile
Virginia Ungar
Biography
Fred Busch has published numerous articles on psychoanalytic technique, and he has been invited to present papers and clinical workshops nationally and internationally. His last four books: Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind (2014); The Analyst’s Reveries: Explorations in Bion’s Enigmatic Concept (2019); Dear Candidate (2020); A Fresh Look at Psychoanalytic Technique (2021).
‘In this rich and vitally important edited book, Fred Busch, one of the most influential and creative writers in psychoanalysis today, has brought together an international group of widely respected analysts to address a broad landscape of contemporary psychoanalytic issues. This timely book is distinguished both by a level of clarity that reaches far beyond psychoanalytic tribalism and wise, discerning thought that will serve as a catalyst for further analytic progress.
Michael J. Diamond, training and supervising analyst, Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies; author, Masculinity and Its Discontents and Ruptures in the American Psyche: Containing Destructive Populism in Perilous Times
‘There are books that one has to pay attention to when reading them, and others that draw your attention. Psychoanalysis at the Crossroads belongs to this second class. In it, Fred Bush brings together prestigious colleagues from around the world who write about current issues that have to do with theoretical, clinical, and institutional concerns. There are multiple perspectives on each of the issues that makes it a book for real exchange. Psychoanalysis at the Crossroads is a symphonic work that shows the strength of our discipline and its continuous growth.’
Claudia Lucia Borensztejn, training analyst at the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association (APA). Ex-president of APA 2016- 2020. Editor of Diccionario de Psicoanálisis Argentino. Latinoamérican. Board representative in IPA 2021-2023
‘Eloquent and compelling. With this new collection of essays, written by psychoanalysts from diverse and contradictory perspectives, Fred Busch challenges us to meet at this contemporary crossroads… a current fork on the road…to Thebes? … and take it as an opportunity to rethink the psychoanalytic tapestry, not only by speaking in one’s own direction, but also by listening to others. Otherwise, we are ineluctably doomed.’
Ellen Sparer, training analyst and director of Training of the Paris Institute of Psychoanalysis, S.P.P.
