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Fred Busch has collected papers from well-known authors from North and South America, Europe and Israel with very different ideas concerning the crossing of paths in psychoanalysis in the present and looking towards the future.
Busch describes, in his short introduction, the process of the book's development, in which he asked well-known psychoanalytic authors to write on the topic of psychoanalytic crossroads. Busch declares “I’m someone who prefers we don’t drift into going one way or the other when we reach the crossroads. Lively debate of these issues, I believe, is our main task” (3). Busch, it seems, would like us to stand at the crossroads and listen to the varying points of view presented in the chapters of this book and to discuss these views, with the hope of finding some common ground. Busch also expresses a concern that he has observed an increasing tendency of analysts to retreat into their chosen group or school of psychoanalysis, “surround[ing] ourselves with people who agree with our conclusions, when we should be gravitating towards those who challenge our thought process” (1).
The task for this book and for the future of psychoanalysis, is thus, according to Busch, a “lively debate” of controversial issues. However, this is a book with such a wealth of discussion material from so many different and mostly opposing corners of the psychoanalytic arena that it seems to be more of a spaghetti junction than a crossroads. Because each chapter stands alone, presenting specific ideas that are often clothed in the language of a specific school of psychoanalysis, the “lively debate” is often indiscernible. Nonetheless, I agree with Busch that it is the “lively debates” and the controversial discussions that make up the “treasures” of psychoanalysis, in the past and to this day.
The first section of the book, “What is Basic About Psychoanalytic Technique and Theory”, concentrates mostly, but not exclusively, on controversies stemming from North America: the rela