Unfree Associations: Inside Psychoanalytic Institutes (The Library of Object Relations)
The relevance of an American edition of Douglas Kirsner's book cannot be exaggerated. It is a fundamental contribution to the concerns of the North American Psychoanalytic Community with the present challenges to psychoanalysis in our culture. . . . Warmly recommended to all professionals engaged in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapies; particularly, of course, to all those engaged in participating, as students or teachers, in psychoanalytic education. (Otto Kernberg, M.D.)This interesting book is easy to read and may appeal to a wider audience. . . . Psychoanalysis stands as a cultural fact and Douglas Kisner provides a valuable account of a little-known world. (Metapsychology Online Reviews)Douglas Kirsner's must-read book has become a classic for the study of what holds psychoanalysis back as a science and an institution. This book describes Kirsner's methodological study of the four most influential institutes in the American Psychoanalytic Association, which is still the most dominant single analytic force in the United States and a powerful force in the rest of the analytic universe. Documenting the stagnation, arrogance, and even corruption of these institutions, he shows in exquisite detail how they have stifled growth in the field, lowered morale in training, and cut psychoanalysis off from the nurture of its contemporary sister disciplines like neuroscience and research. Now, with a new epilogue documenting current efforts at renewal, and the still remaining forces of regression, and with a vigorous introduction by Otto Kernberg, recent past president of the International Psychoanalytic Association, this book is more relevant than ever. All students and adherents of psychoanalysis need to read this fair, tough-minded book to see what must be addressed if psychoanalysis is to become a renewable modern resource for the study of development and the benefit of patients. (David E. Scharff, M.D.)