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The title of this book is perhaps a bit misleading in that it contains only one paper by Joseph Lichtenberg. If you want to read more of his writings, turn to his A Developmentalist's Approach to Research, Theory, and Therapy: The Selected Works of Joseph D. Lichtenberg (2016). If you want to know what makes a remarkable psychoanalyst, particularly this one, or see what others have to say about him and his work, turn to the book under review.
This is a festschrift for Lichtenberg on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday, and it begins with some ninety pages of interviews between the editors and Lichtenberg, followed by short essays from colleagues and friends, short papers about him and his work, reviews of some of his contributions, and Lichtenberg's 2005 Kohut Memorial Lecture: “Freud and Kohut: What Lasts, What Fades.”
What makes this book unusual is the breadth of the look it gives us into the life and thinking of an important member of our profession. We learn much about how he became the energetic and generous man the contributors to this volume describe.
Rarely do we see such a detailed account of how an analyst becomes who he is, and what is important to him. Had Kohut written today about himself, as we assume he did in “The Two Analyses of Mr. Z” (1979), “he would have been part of the relational trend in which authors share more about themselves in the literature, thus providing sorely needed vitalizing twinship selfobject experiences and important reciprocal exchanges with fellow professionals” (Kottler, 2015, p. 385). In the interviews, published here, Lichtenberg has done this with no disguise.
The five lengthy interviews with Lichtenberg, conducted in April 2010, give a fascinating view into the life of a leading analyst.