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A review of Making Our Ideas Clear: Pragmatism in Psychoanalysis edited by Philip Rosenbaum. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2015. 329 pp.
This book is one of more than 30 volumes in the series, “Advances in Cultural Psychology: Constructing Human Development,” whose general editor, Jaan Valsiner, is the Niels Bohr Professor of Cultural Psychology at Aalborg University, Denmark, and professor of psychology and English at Clark University, Worcester. In the book's preface, Valsiner states: “The main value of the present volume is to take a new look at the psychoanalytic enterprise through the lens of cultural psychologies
of self and bring this question of interpersonal enactments in therapy to the focus of our attention” (p. xii). If indeed the book had focused on the semiotics of enactment, it would have been a much better book. As it is, the book is divided into three sections: I) “Pragmatic Beginnings: A Historical Overview”; II) “Applying Pragmatic Theory to Contemporary Questions”; and III) “Pragmatic Methodology in Clinical Work.” In all there are 11 chapters, a commentary after each section, and a conclusion. Half of the authors are American and the others are from Switzerland, Italy, Finland, the UK, and Israel. Several of the authors are practicing psychoanalysts trained at the William Alanson White Institute. The book's editor and one of the major contributors, Philip Rosenbaum, was a postdoctoral fellow and analytic graduate of the White Institute and then moved to Philadelphia where he currently teaches at Haverford College. Presenting the links between the White Institute and American pragmatic thought is, in my judgment, the main contribution of the book. We see how Harry Stack Sullivan's ideas are part of a discourse shared by Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead. The book serves as a tribute to the enduring interpersonal tradition of the White Institute as well as an introduction to a variety of non-