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Bernard Brandchaft, a Los Angeles training analyst who is now well into his 90s, has enjoyed an analytic career spanning the last 60 years; he is one of the pioneers of the Relational and Intersubjective schools of psychoanalysis. Brandchaft's longevity together with his capacity to question himself and interrogate psychoanalytic theory and technique while continuing to be deeply committed to clinical psychoanalysis has made for a remarkable trajectory in his thinking and development. In essence this development is what the book describes. Readers who think that something essentially psychoanalytical is lost in the intersubjective approach will disagree with some of his conclusions. Yet, for any committed clinician who struggles with the awareness of having failed some of his or her patients and wishes to re-examine what might have gone wrong in those treatments, this is a truly fascinating read. Brandchaft has immersed himself in these dilemmas and found some answers, although these might not be answers one will find for oneself. Readers who approach the book with an open mind will be challenged to rethink aspects of their clinical practice and in the process will articulate and better understand their own views.
The book is co-authored by Brandchaft himself and two younger colleagues, Drs Doctors and Sorter. Both are training analysts at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, of which Brandchaft is a founding member. The two junior co-authors, to whom Brandchaft has clearly been a tremendously important mentor, introduce the book in Chapter 1 and provide commentary on some of the following chapters. Chapter 2 is Brandchaft's own description of his psychoanalytical journey, and then there are the main papers authored by Brandchaft from the time that his clinical experiences led him to leave an essentially Kleinian orientation and to adopt and develop further an intersubjective approach. The book concludes with two summary chapters: the first, by