Henry Friedman keeps repeating his fantasy of my views, although I've tried to correct him before, and he is aware (or should be) of contradictory evidence in my book, Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind (2013), which he chose, as Chair, to be part of a Panel at the meetings of American Psychoanalytic Association, where recent books were discussed.
* Over the last 30 years I've devoted myself to trying to understand how a contemporary view of the Ego can be useful in psychoanalytic treatment. It has found resonance in psychoanalytic cultures throughout the world (e.g., see references). My views have nothing to do with the Ego Psychology Friedman presents, which seems based on what he learned as a candidate (i.e., When Friedman describes Ego Psychology as a drive-defense model he is actually describing the basis of the Topographic Model). In fact, the Ego Psychology I've been writing has little to do with what I was taught.
* Friedman tries to portray me as dismissing all points of view except my own. How does he understand this quote from Stefano Bolignini praising my work from the aforementioned book? “In my view Fred Busch is an authentic international psychoanalyst not only because of his wide and brilliant culture, but more specifically because of his capacity for dialogue and in his special skill in understanding the other's mentality and position: an attitude that creates new spaces, new encounters, new shared visions both in the clinical work and in the scientific interchange”.
* In my opening talk to the 2015 meetings of International Psychoanalytic Association (Busch, 2015) I pointed to a common ground between my perspective and those of Marilia Aisenstein, Bion, Betty Joseph, Nino Ferro, Andre Green, M. Baranger, etc. I
spent three years immersed in the writings of Bion, Ogden, Ferro, and Elizabeth and Elias de Rochas Barros resulting in my most recent book, The Analyst's Reveries (2018, 2019). I have been invited to give papers, clinical workshops, and dialogue with colleagues in Brazil, Argentina, Italy, France, Russia, Greece, and my work has been translated into 10 languages (see references below).
* If Friedman weren't presenting his fantasy of my views, he would know that I've written a fair amount about countertransference and have not rejected its importance.
* Friedman's interpretive leap (i.e., I don't like being questioned) from my reflections on the candidate who said she liked everyone just saying what they thought, rather than being taught, is worthy of Jackie Joyner- Kersee (a former Olympic champion in the long jump). I find it important to questioned by candidates if they are interested in learning. What this candidate indicated was that she had nothing to learn.
* I don't believe one can teach candidates by what I understand as democratic principles…i.e., where decisions on validity, value and meaning are equally decided. While candidates come to us with a different degrees of therapeutic experience, and there is an increasing tendency to minimize the difference between psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, significant differences remain (Busch, 2010). As Friedman doesn't seem to believe in the significance of the unconscious in mental life (as I noted in response to his article), I can see why he might think anyone entering psychoanalytic training can have equal say in defining concepts. I was a questioner of ideas as a trainee, expecting my teachers to understand the reason for my questions and to explain the basis for their ideas. I was rarely satisfied with the answers I received, and I've spent much of my professional life trying to find answers to these questions.
* While I recognize aspects of the atmosphere Freidman describes in his training, our experiences weren't similar. I did notice when I first
came to Boston that older analysts at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute would talk about how mean their Training Analysts and most other analyst were. This is no longer the case.
* The Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute was way ahead of its time in training Psychologists. Starting in the early 1970's many Psychologists were trained. In my class of seven there were 3 Psychologists and one Philosopher. We were never asked to sign a pledge that we would only treat patients for research purposes.
* I didn't mind being taught a particular point of view. I was in psychoanalytic training to learn how to be a psychoanalyst. It's true there was little taught about European and Latin American perspectives, but neither was American psychoanalysis welcomed in these places. In fact, when Kohut's first book was published, our class petitioned to have a class to study his work, and it was approved.
* My problem was with the way that I was taught. Seminar leaders were not knowledgeable about the text they were teaching, and thus the meaning of what we were reading never became clear. Clinical seminars became supervision, and larger clinical/theoretical issues weren't introduced. For some seminar leaders our class became known as the one that asked too many questions.
* The atmosphere in my Institute was different than what Friedman describes in his. Training Analysts had no say in the advancement of candidates they had in analysis. Ours was a non-reporting Institute, and one's personal analyst was not allowed to participate in any educational discussion that pertained to a candidate in analysis with him/her. While Training Analysts often had full analytic practices, most of us had 4-6 patient's in analysis shortly after being approved to treat cases without supervision (most often before graduation). I taught a clinical course before I was a Training Analyst, and important Institute committees had many non-Training Analysts on them (e.g., Education, Admission, Curriculum, etc.).
* The place where issues of power became most evident were in the selection of Training Analysts. I was the first person to become a Training Analyst in 8 years, and only after I had been turned down. It was and still is difficult to understand why this was, but I have one speculation. I think it was in the early 1950's that the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute was discredited as a training institute by the American Psychoanalytic Association because, in part—surprise—they were not approving new training analyst. Candidates had to continue their training in New York or Chicago, and these people became the leaders of the Institute when it was reinstated. I think it's very well possible that the trauma they experienced was unconsciously repeated. There were many other factors involved, I'm sure.