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Medical Director, The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, Westchester Division; Professor of Psychiatry, Cornell University Medical College; Training and Supervising Analyst, Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.
WHAT FOLLOWS ARE DESCRIPTIONS OF RECENT foreign writings I have particularly enjoyed and benefited from. My pleasure at singling out for comment some of the many books that cross the book editor's desk is tempered by regret at having to keep the list within reasonable bounds. In presenting this selection I hope to share the excitement generated by encountering new ideas, fresh formulations, and additional applications of psychoanalysis. I also hope to broaden and deepen communication among psychoanalysts from different parts of the world.
David Liberman's Linguística, Interacción Communicativa y Proceso Psicoanalítico [Linguistics, Communicative Interaction, and Psychoanalytic Process] (Buenos Aires: Kargieman, 1983) is a challenging study of linguistic expression in various types of character pathology, as found in the psychoanalytic situation. Liberman developed an original approach to understanding the defensive functions of linguistic styles. I found particularly intriguing his recommendation, for example, that the analyst be prepared to frame his interpretations in a stylistic mode that is different from the patient's, and to avoid the patient's exercise of control by means of his linguistic style. Liberman's untimely death in 1983 was a great loss to psychoanalysis. It is to be hoped that this stimulating work will find its way into English.