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Some years ago I participated in a conference that, I think, was about how analysts who hold different theoretical positions in psychoanalysis reacted differently to clinical material. I was seated next to Dale Boesky, the author of this very compelling book under review, and I remember that he asked me a question that, I think, was about evidence and I answered according to my own particular theoretical bent and he seemed satisfied. The years have passed and Dale has persisted in asking questions, and he has now compiled and distilled all of those answers into a very scholarly and clear-headed book which will reward any reader who shares Dale's relentless search for answers.
This is not an easy book to summarize so I shall try to capture the main theme by a quote:
Contexualizing criteria are the diverse integrating, linking organizing concepts that bridge three domains: first, the raw, uncontextualized associations of the patient; second, the way the analyst interacts with the patient while participating and observing; and third, the explicit theoretic model favored by the analyst.
This point is the essential thrust of Boesky's effort to show how and why we so often disagree, talk past one another, ignore or argue with each other and so have failed to present any sort of happy union of psychoanalytic discourse. Boesky insists we make explicit our theories, our selection of data as well as our personal contributions.
Boesky illustrates how psychoanalytic controversies develop by presenting detailed case examples which demonstrate how one reader or listener attends to one point, while another stresses another, just as one ignores one point and a different reader or listener neglects another. I suspect that Boesky is probably not aware of a viewpoint in communication theory called ‘Context Theory’ which fairly well covers most of Boesky's ideas and shows them to have been a staple of work in communication for many years. The originality of Boesky is in his detaile