Meet the Author: Fred Busch

Glen Gabbard introduced the panel with a selective overview of the contributions made by Fred Busch. Gabbard stressed the manner in which Busch has built on the earlier work of Paul Gray. In particular, Gray's addition of an educative element in analytic technique has been emphasized and expanded by Busch. This approach to analytic technique strives to teach the analysand a new type of thinking—one that involves the close observation of one's associations. Resistance, in particular, is monitored closely, with the analyst listening to and teaching the analysand to listen for moments in the analytic process when resistance is operating. Busch's approach to psychoanalysis is meant to find a way to help the patient's ego oscillate between being in analysis and observing the free associations that characterize the analytic process. The goal of analysis shifts in such an approach from changing one's core unconscious fantasies to gaining mastery over them by thinking about them. Resistance analysis becomes the heart of analytic technique and not just a prelude to the deep interpretation of unconscious fantasy. Self-analysis becomes a key criterion for termination, as patients demonstrate a mastery of the analytic way of thinking and apply it to their own free associations, particularly noticing unconscious defensive activity aimed at keeping thoughts out of awareness.

Gabbard noted that Busch has departed from Gray's thinking in important ways. For example, Gray considers the primary threat to the ego to be a superego injunction externalized onto the analyst. Such a view leads to resistance analysis being equated with superego analysis. But Busch views the threats to the ego as multiple, the superego being