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This is my most personal book review of Philip Bromberg's most personal volume. I've often been surprised, and in truth somewhat saddened, when colleagues remark that when reading Bromberg it feels as if he is writing to them personally: I am not alone.
As a newly-minted intern at the Karen Horney Psychoanalytic Center, I was confronted by a patient with whom I was far out of my depth. She spoke of her many personality components of which she was aware- and somewhat in charge - and mapped them out in schematic drawings so that I could better understand her personality composition and daily challenges. What little I knew about so called multiple personalities came from films like Sybil or Three Faces of Eve: But this woman claimed more than twenty selves.
In my naiveté, I attended a Bromberg case presentation at the William Alanson White Institute (where he was well known for his creative work with dissociative patients) with the hope that he might make sense of my “Eve”; he did so by detailing his work with someone who also suffered from a similar character pathology. As I made my way to a bus stop following the talk, I was surprised to find Dr. Bromberg standing alone in the March drizzle. I thanked him for his presentation and he replied, simply, “Call me Phil.”
Later, as my newfound interpersonal-relational self emerged, as a candidate, then on my own, I sought encouragement and understanding in “Phil's” writing about trauma and dissociation and interviewed him for a possible journal piece-unfortunately, it was never published-at his quirky office aerie in a townhouse on the Upper Eastside of Manhattan. Philip Bromberg was my first - and last - psychoanalytic crush.
Now in paperback, The Shadow of the Tsunami is Philip Bromberg's final gift to us all. He died of natural causes in May, 2020 at age 89.
For readers unacquainted with Bromberg's previous two volumes: Standing in the Spaces (1998) and Awakening the Dreamer (2006) The Shadow of the Tsunami can prove challeng