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The contemporary psychoanalytic dialogue is one that focuses on competing theoretical perspectives and the technical ramifications deriving from them. On one side of the dialogue are those who claim that despite theoretical differences there is a “common ground” (Wallerstein, 1990) of clinical technique to which we all adhere. On the other side are those who question this assumption and argue that “if there is common ground why do we do such different things?” (Paniagua, 1995). Fred Busch's Rethinking Clinical Technique falls into this latter group. Busch not only highlights the important technical differences that distinguish his ego-psychological approach from self psychological, relational, and intersubjective perspectives, but he takes on some of the more subtle technical distinctions that exist within contemporary ego psychology itself, that is, the differences that exist between Arlow and Brenner and himself on the conception and technique of resistance analysis. Thus, Busch's rethinking of clinical technique is really an attempt to define the unique psychoanalytic space that distinguishes “close process” (Gray, 1994) resistance analysis from some of the major alternative modes of treatment on today's psychoanalytic scene.
This clearly written, closely reasoned, and richly illustrated book presents the reader with a systematic and clarifying articulation of the technical implications of an ego psychology based on the centrality of Freud's (1923, 1926) revised theory of the mind and his appreciation of the ego's response to danger. Beginning with a brief chapter that attempts to locate ego psychology within the contemporary psychoanalytic scene, Busch quickly gets to his point that basic misunderstandings exist, even within ego psychology, in the application of structural theory to clinical phenomena. Using Arlow and Brenner as the representative model application of structural theory, Busch, in a well-reasoned critique of their work, distinguishes their concept