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Lewis AronKaren Starr Relational Perspectives Series, Routledge, New York, 2012, 464 pp., $59.95, ISBN: 978-0415529990 (paperback)
As I began reading Lewis Aron and Karen Starr’s A Psychotherapy for the People: Toward a Progressive Psychoanalysis, the experience reminded me of looking through a kaleidoscope: in particular, the way in which the colorful glass pieces – the same ones used to make each and every pattern – shift and click into place, forming new and intriguing configurations, but all of an expectable palate. Such is the nature of most psychoanalytic works – they provide a novel look at old ideas, with the occasional surprise and true “aha” moment. But as this reader moved from chapter to chapter, it became increasingly clear that this ambitious project was intending to take on something much larger. It is a rather stunning kaleidoscopic tour de force all its own, offering the reader a socio-cultural contextual lens through which to view the whole of psychoanalysis, including implications for its future survival.
Aron and Starr, both firmly grounded in their Jewish identities as well as in psychoanalytic thought and practice, together boldly take on and speak to what has remained relatively unspeakable in the field; the role played by and the profound impact of Freud’s Judaism, and the cumulative impact of the trauma of anti-Semitism on the development and evolution of psychoanalytic theory and practice. In a skillful and scholarly manner, the authors, through this lens, revisit and reconsider our history, theory formation and practice habits, as well as the contributions of a number of the major psychoanalytic thinkers. They succeed in creating a convincing, complex, and more profound picture, not only of the enigma of Freud,