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It is difficult not to wonder if psychoanalysis isn’t inherently tied to the mobilization of something transgressive that exists within us all [Levine, p. 1].
In the introduction to Boundaries, Boundary Crossings, and Boundary Violations, Howard Levine, as editor, reminds us that even across theoretical orientations, psychoanalysts share the common goal of attempting to seek truth. At the same time, we appreciate the human tendency to avoid encountering difficult truths in ourselves and in our patients. This text, originally a special edition of the International Journal of Controversial Discussions, includes nine essays by North American, European, and Latin American analysts who, by Levine, were given “carte blanche to write about boundaries, boundary crossings, and boundary violations and their vicissitudes in the clinical or educational situation, in our institutions and organizations and in the culture at large” (p. 4). The broad prompt was intentional, according to Levine, with the hope that authors would expand beyond discussions of sexual boundary violations alone, as several authors ended up doing.
Many of us who have experienced porous boundaries or clear violations in our analyses, as well as those of us who have experienced the disruptive aftermath that clinical transgressions cause in our institutes and societies, know all too well that the question “How did x violation happen?” plagues both the particular individual affected and the group within which the violation occurred. Under Levine’s editorship, the authors of this book’s chapters contribute evocative and unique perspectives with which to consider this question. Several authors in the book (e.g., Andrea
Celenza, Heribert Blass, Charles Levin) consider the role of the psychoanalytic community, its culture, complicity and overall group functioning, on boundary violations. Some contributors to this volume address individual aspects of the analyst and patient dyad thought to increase the liability f