Understanding Dissidence and Controversy in the History of Psychoanalysis. Edited by Martin S. Bergmann. New York:  Other Press. 2004  396 + xvi pp., index.

This book is based on an invited symposium, initiated by Martin S. Bergmann and sponsored by the Psychoanalytic Research and Develop

ment Fund. Focused on understanding— offering opinions, yet remaining productively inconclusive—it reads as an event, a vivacious intellectual and emotional exchange.

There are three sections: (1) a framing text by Martin Bergmann; (2) essays by AndrÄ Green, Otto F. Kernberg, Anton O. Kris, Harold P. Blum, Jill Savege Scharff, Robert S. Wallerstein, Elisabeth Young—Bruehl and Bergmann; and (3) conference proceedings, which include ideas of Mortimer Ostow, Peter Neubauer, Henry Nunberg and William I. Grossman, as well as an additional statement—response by Wal—lerstein, who could not participate in the conference itself.

For those interested in further research on issues discussed, the volume supplies not only an inspiration, but a valuable reference system, from extensive bibliographies to an index. For those interested in practice, it distinguishes dissidence in the realm of general theory (a competitive battle between metapsychologies), and dissidence in the realm of theory of technique (e.g., the work of Sandor Ferenczi).

To speak about dissidence today is difficult; its meanings have been safely assigned to the past. As Green says, today “there is no dissidence …because there is a widespread dissent” coupled with “pretense of tolerance” (pp. 26, 126). Once there used to be an orthodoxy, and there existed ideas that officially fell outside it. Today, “instead of theoretical pluralism with awareness and investigation of differences, we have theoretical splitting, fusion, and confusion …[whereby] …‘every flower should blossom’ …and that's a danger on the other side of monolithic orthodoxy” (Blum, p. 341).

One could easily add that there was a time when psychoanalysis itself was a project of dissent from the conventional culture. It was exactly this self—definitional dissent that needed to be kept uniform. Gradually, the determination of