Letter

To the Editor:

I found W. W. Meissner's review of my book, Cultural Theory and Psychoanalytic Tradition (Psychoanalytic Books, 4, 142-145), to have been hastily written, tendentious, and dismissive of the style and substance of my book. What follows is a reply to a number of his points.

In identifying me to his audience, Meissner states that I am a lecturer in the department of “education” at the University of California, Los Angeles. If he had carefully read the biographical material on the cover jacket of my book, he would have noted my affiliation with the Council of Education Development, which has nothing to do with the department of education, and which is an innovative program designed to teach inter-disciplinary courses to undergraduates. He mentions my “formal training” in European cultural history, both in the United States and in France, but curiously omits my equally formal clinical training in psychoanalysis at the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute from 1980 to 1988. This is a serious omission, especially given that I devote over one third of my “Introduction” (pp. xx-xxxi) to a personal summary of my psychoanalytic education. Meissner goes on to allege that we “rarely get a glimpse of Fisher,” that we “see Fisher only in the mirror of the works he addresses.” Once again, the reviewer misrepresents the truth. He makes no mention whatsoever of my 44-page autobiographical introduction, an essay which is deliberately self-revealing about me and my journey from French cultural history to psychoanalysis. I wrote this to experiment in laying bare my own subjectivity. Other essays in the volume clearly indicate my own point of view, value system, and perspectives on a number of controversial issues. Meissner seems to enjoy taking pot shots at my apparent “heroes” and seems pleased at unmasking me for idealization. This inaccurately distorts the historical and critical methodology at work in the book; the reader of the review might