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As we approach the upcoming centennial celebration of our discipline, we find the hounds of criticism braying at our institution doors, threatening to turn the festivities into a wake. The common ground that Wallerstein (1990)1 attempted to stake out for us was beginning to seem like a rather elusive piece of territory. Nonetheless, psychoanalysis continues to evolve and manage the strain rather nicely, thank you.
A significant contributor to this burgeoning spirit of ecumenism has been Warren Poland. Melting The Darkness is on the cutting edge of controversy in that it considers the analyst's authority and the place of subjectivity within the consulting room. No debate in our recent history has generated more heat — our journals and meeting rooms are straining to accommodate the changes that are occurring in technique and in deciding in which ways, if any, technique is informed by theory.
Poland is in a unique position to write on this subject, having emerged as an independent representative within contemporary psychoanalysis. His is a paradoxical unity of what one usually understands as alternatives. Poland's vision is always in the direction of preserving the truth of human existence in all its complexity, stead-fastly resisting the lure of a parochial allegiance to partial visions. The reader is in the privileged position of peering over his shoulder as he weaves together papers he has written, modified, and created anew, devoid of the disfluencies that plague such volumes. Presented as a lyrical and personal reading, conversational in tone, informed by the force of his intellect and breadth of his knowledge, the book is a