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Many of the past and current faculty members of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute (NYPI) have made valuable contributions to psychoanalytic theory and practice. This volume of transcribed lectures and debates of the faculty of the NYPI from 1989 through 1991 is, unfortunately, not one of those contributions. Seeming to address the changing landscape of psychoanalysis, each of the five chapters is devoted to separate topics that, to me, represent a preconscious struggle to find a dialectic that will enliven the curriculum at the NYPI. This volume reminds readers that the age-old tension still exists between training and education as an enterprise designed to pass on conventional wisdom and as a prime to the pump of creativity.
I found this book dated and disappointing. It is not only a poor relation of the series of invited articles published in the Psychoanalytic Quarterly from 1988 to 1990, but it is like a relative who arrives very late for a family party, dressed in his Sunday best, expecting to be celebrated for showing up at all. Nevertheless, this volume does succeed in revealing that there is more than one point of view among the members of the NYPI on what should be included in their curriculum.
Each chapter is constructed around a point-counterpoint format of lectures with discussions following. The first chapter, on current controversies