About the Book
In this first-of-kind book, senior psychoanalysts from around the world offer personal reflections on their own training, what it was like to become a psychoanalyst, and what they would like most to convey to the candidate of today.
With forty-two personal letters to candidates, this edited collection helps analysts in training and those recently entering the profession to reflect upon what it means to be a psychoanalytic candidate and enter the profession. Letters tackle the anxieties, ambiguities, complications, and pleasures faced in these tasks. From these reflections, the book serves as a guide through this highly personal, complex, and meaningful experience and helps readers consider the many different meanings of being a candidate in a psychanalytic institute.
Perfect for candidates and psychoanalytic educators, this book inspires analysts at all levels to think, once again, about this impossible but fascinating profession and to consider their own psychoanalytic development.
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction by Fred Busch (USA) 2. Arthur Leonoff (Canada) 3. Michael Diamond (USA) 4. Roosevelt Cassorla (Brazil) 5. Eric Marcus (USA) 6. Cláudio Laks Eizirik (Brazil) 7. Theodore Jacobs (USA) 8. Paola Marion (Italy) 9. Otto F. Kernberg (USA) 10. Stefano Bolognini (Italy) 11. Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau (USA) 12. Abel Fainstein (Argentina) 13. Jay Greenberg (USA) 14. Heribert Blass (Germany) 15. Elias de Rocha Barros (Brazil) 16. Elizabeth de Rocha Barros (Brazil) 17. Daniel Jacobs (USA) 18. Eike Heinz (Germany) 19. Alan Sugarman (USA) 20. Paola Golinelli (Italy) 21. Allannah Furlong (Canada) 22. Barbara Stimmel (USA) 23. Abbot Bronstein (USA) 24. Cecilio Paniagua (Spain) 25. Ellen Sparer (France) 26. Harriet Wolfe (USA) 27. Maj-Britt Winberg (Sweden) 28. Arlene Kramer Richards (USA) 29. Gohar Homayounpour (Iran) 30. Ines Bayona (Colombia) 31. Donald Moss (USA) 32. Virginia Ungar (Argentina) 33. Arnold Richards (USA) 34. Ellen Pinsky (USA) 35. H. Shmuel Erlich (Israel) 36. Bent Rosenbaum (Denmark) 37. Fredrick Perlman (USA) 38. Claudia Borensztejn (Argentina) 39. Jane Kite (USA) 40. Gabriela Goldstein (Argentina) 41. Eva Schmid-Gloor (Switzerland) 42. Adriana Prengler (USA, Venezuela) 43. Rachel Blass (Israel) 44. Donald Campbell (England) 45. P.S. (Fred Busch)
About the Author :
Fred Busch, Ph.D., is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, and on the Faculty of the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies. He has published over 70 articles in the psychoanalytic literature and has been invited to present his thinking about clinical technique throughout the world. He’s published four books on the psychoanalytic method, the last two with Routledge, Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind (2013), and The Analyst’s Reveries: Explorations in Bion’s Enigmatic Concept (2019).
Review :
It is possible that you will be surprised and educated by what you find in this book. Determination, kinship, wisdom (and some heartbreak) walk hand in hand through its pages with a rousing breadth, unlikely to be available at a single institute. The writers of the letters have been generous with their experience. Agreements emerge: the profound value of personal analysis, free from artificial institutional requirements, and the necessity of steeping oneself in the literature. Another voice is also audible. Readers of Dante will hear: "Retain all hope, ye who enter here –– much hardship awaits you, as do human splendors".
Charles Baekeland, IPSO President-elect
As I have done, I strongly encourage you to immerse yourself in the pages of this book. The words – I mean the thoughts, the feelings, tales and experiences – here come as in a dream dreamt a night; once afar, now close. We want to hear what they want to say. More than that, deep inside some place of ours, we need to. Our psychoanalytic/symbolic fathers, mothers, those who walked the path a little ahead, before us, turn back and tell us a bit of what they saw.
So here they come.
As the IPSO current editor, I could not have hoped for more, than tell you now: let’s go there together. I invite you, my colleague, to this chorus: Dear analyst, "Talk to me like the rain, I will lie here and listen", as the man in the play by Tennessee Williams would say.
Cláudia Antonelli, GEPCampinas, Brazil
"Dear Candidate" is a truly moving book which brings to life the real and personal aspects of analytic training and life beyond training. Like a good analysis , the journey of reading through the letters stirs one up while at the same time provides encouragement and curiosity for the many conflicting emotions encountered during candidacy. Unlike any work thus far in analytic literature, this book is a guide on how to have compassion for one’s internal and external world as a candidate and future analyst. A powerfully rich book that every candidate should read at the beginning and end of candidacy. Dear Candidate" will surely prove to be a comforting companion to candidates around the globe during psychoanalytic training for years to come.
Angela Vuotto, Secretary of American Psychoanalytic Association Candidate Council
I enthusiastically read this compendium of analyst letters to candidates, hailing from the three IPA regions (Latin America, North America and Europe), assimilating the work not as institutional missives but rather as personal communiques with building thematic overlays. I was impressed by their overarching tone of compassion and generosity of spirit. The letters are instructive to the current generation of candidates, emphasizing the evolution of analytic teaching and thinking. Many letters highlight the vital need for candidates to gain analytic exposure and training outside their institutes or societies, as being foundational and invaluable to their growth as analysts, with some letters emphasizing the crucial role of active involvement with the IPA’s candidate organization, IPSO (International Psychoanalytical Society Organization www.ipso.world).
Kathryn McCormick, IPSO President.
'It is possible that you will be surprised and educated by what you find in this book. Determination, kinship, wisdom (and some heartbreak) walk hand in hand through its pages with a rousing breadth, unlikely to be available at a single institute. The writers of the letters have been generous with their experience. Agreements emerge: the profound value of personal analysis, free from artificial institutional requirements, and the necessity of steeping oneself in the literature. Another voice is also audible. Readers of Dante will hear: "Retain all hope, ye who enter here––much hardship awaits you, as do human splendors".'
Charles Baekeland, I.P.S.O. President-elect
'As I have done, I strongly encourage you to immerse yourself in the pages of this book. The words––I mean the thoughts, the feelings, tales and experiences––here come as in a dream dreamt at night; once afar, now close. We want to hear what they want to say. More than that, deep inside some place of ours, we need to. Our psychoanalytic/symbolic fathers, mothers, those who walked the path a little ahead, before us, turn back and tell us a bit of what they saw. So here they come. As the I.P.S.O. current editor, I could not have hoped for more, than to tell you now: let’s go there together. I invite you, my colleague, to this chorus: Dear analyst, 'Talk to me like the rain, I will lie here and listen', as the man in the play by Tennessee Williams would say.'
Cláudia Antonelli, GEPCampinas, Brazil
'Dear Candidate is a truly moving book which brings to life the real and personal aspects of analytic training and life beyond training. Like a good analysis, the journey of reading through the letters stirs one up while at the same time provides encouragement and curiosity for the many conflicting emotions encountered during candidacy. Unlike any work thus far in analytic literature, this book is a guide on how to have compassion for one’s internal and external world as a candidate and future analyst. A powerfully rich book that every candidate should read at the beginning and end of candidacy. Dear Candidate will surely prove to be a comforting companion to candidates around the globe during psychoanalytic training for years to come.'
Angela Vuotto, Secretary of the American Psychoanalytic Association Candidate Council
'I enthusiastically read this compendium of analyst letters to candidates, hailing from the three I.P.A. regions (Latin America, North America and Europe), assimilating the work not as institutional missives but rather as personal communiques with building thematic overlays. I was impressed by their overarching tone of compassion and generosity of spirit. The letters are instructive to the current generation of candidates, emphasizing the evolution of analytic teaching and thinking. Many letters highlight the vital need for candidates to gain analytic exposure and training outside their institutes or societies, as being foundational and invaluable to their growth as analysts, with some letters emphasizing the crucial role of active involvement with the I.P.A.’s candidate organization, I.P.S.O. (International Psychoanalytical Society Organization, www.ipso.world).'
Kathryn McCormick, I.P.S.O. President.
'In Dear Candidate, the reader finds the dramatic twists and turns of the candidate's life. Yet, this collection is first and foremost a work of deep generosity, care and thoughtful reflection, written with honesty, empathy, humour and love for our field. As importantly, the collection awaits answers from its reader - the candidate. This invitation to respond posits the “candidate” as the becoming analyst, both held in mind as the addressee, as well as present as an internal figure in the mind of the seasoned analyst.'
Masha Mimran, Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. To read this review in full please see the following: Mimran, M. (2022) Dear Candidate: Analysts from around the world offer personal reflections on psychoanalytic training, education, and the profession, 1st edition, edited by Fred Busch, London and New York, Routledge, 2021, 161pp., $28.12, ISBN:978-0367617622. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 103:918-922
