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A younger colleague recently lamented the lack of what he called “the bread and butter” of psychoanalytic training. He was referring to the current emphasis within our training institutes on the sociopolitical aspects of psychoanalysis, in contrast to what he was looking for: an invigorating
dive into deepening our understanding of how psychic transformation takes place in the psychoanalytic relationship. Warmed by the Fires: Selected Papers of Allan Frosch will satisfy that longing.
This volume of collected papers is a most welcome contribution to the “bread and butter” of psychoanalysis. In it, we are offered the opportunity to follow Frosch's thinking over many years as he develops a comprehensive and elegant model of clinical theory based on his understanding of how the process of symbolization takes place in the psyche and the myriad ways that this process manifests in psychoanalysis. Throughout, Frosch offers abundant clinical material with unusual intimacy. The result is a body of work that demonstrates the depths to which classical Freudian theory can still be plumbed, extending its reach to create a theory of clinical practice that is an exemplar of contemporary Freudian thinking.
Allan Frosch was a training analyst at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR), a beloved supervisor and instructor and a cherished colleague. He died in October 2016, at the age of seventy-eight, leaving the IPTAR community bereft. I never had the opportunity to know him. A newcomer to IPTAR, I could only bear witness to the resounding grief that reverberated through the institute upon his death. In retrospect, I see now that his loss was also accompanied by a sense of foreboding, coinciding as it did with our collective knowledge that we were on the cusp of more losses to come. The sense of loss and sorrow that has since taken over the world, and the multitude of sociopolitical changes that have taken place, have roiled all of us. This has been reflected