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Few books that I know are as panoramic, kaleidoscopic, dialectically based and aphoristic as Michael Parsons's The Dove that Returns, The Dove that Vanishes. Excitement begins with the book's name, which Parsons has drawn from Genesis, which describes Noah sending a dove out of his ark to see if the flood has abated. The dove returns conveying
that the earth's face is still wet. The next time it comes back with an olive leaf in its beak, thus informing Noah that the flood has receded somewhat. Upon being sent out a third time, the dove vanishes. The dove that returns brings knowledge to Noah. The dove that vanishes brings nothing. Or so it seems. Think again and you will realise that in using this allegory Parsons has cleverly laid the ground for the themes to come: home and sojourn, tradition and innovation, safety and risk-taking, belonging and freedom, psycho-analysis and beyond psychoanalysis. However, I must not get ahead of myself. So let me return to the four adjectives I have chosen to describe the book.
Panoramic as a compliment to a book tends to bring a huge multi-volume tome to mind. However, it is not the length of manuscript but the genuine contact with a diversity of topics and a fundamentally broad vision of the issues at hand that, to my mind, earns the designation. Parsons's book is devoted to the central contradiction of our clinical enterprise, i.e. psychoanalysis is based upon systematic principles of technique and yet depends upon a deeply personal engagement between two unique individuals. His book, however, goes far beyond the clinical situation and seeks to explicate issues not only of psychoanalytic setting and technique but also of psychoanalytic training and psychoanalytic identity in the context of their inherent contradictions and paradoxes. The scope of discussion is thus widened dramatically but never at the cost of serious attention and depth.
The adjective kaleidoscopic refers to the active manipulation, alteration and juxtaposition