1st Edition
The Inward Eye Psychoanalysts Reflect on Their Lives and Work
A central, although unappreciated, dimension of psychoanalysis is the complex oral tradition through which analysts verbally reconstruct their lives and careers. The Inward Eye captures a significant portion of this tradition. In a series of interviews initially conceived as an aspect of their psychoanalytic education, Laurie Raymond and Susan Rosbrow-Reich skillfully elicit the fascinating personal stories of 16 senior analysts. The interviewees, who represent diverse theoretical traditions and cultural backgrounds, share a willingness to reflect candidly on their preanalytic years, their formative influences, their entry into psychoanalysis, and their relationships with mentors and colleagues. Out of this skillfully guided journey into the personal past emerges a vital human context for understanding the theoretical preferences and clinical styles of analysts as diverse as Arthur Valenstein, Joseph and Anne-Marie Sandler, Jacob Arlow, Andre Green, Leo Stone, Leo and Anita Rangell, Edward Weinshel, Merton M. Gill, Albert Solnit, W. Clifford M. Scott, James McLaughlin, Rebecca Solomon, Joyce McDougall, M. Robert Gardner, and Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel.
Raymond and Rosbrow-Reich succeed in capturing the essential humanity of all their interview subjects, in showing how their subjects' lives outside the consulting room have shaped, and in turn been shaped by, the analytic identities they assume behind the couch. An engrossing read, wonderfully revelatory of its creative subjects, The Inward Eye is also an invaluable contribution to psychoanalytic history.
Biography
Laurie W. Raymond, M.D., is a faculty member of the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England East and a Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. An Assocaite Psychiatrist at the Harvard University Health Services, she is in private practice in Cambridge, MA.
Susan Rosbrow-Reich, Ph.D., is a faculty member of the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England East and the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. A Consulting Psychologist at the Harvard University Health Services, she is in private practice in Belmont, MA.
"What a wonderful conception! Two skilled and creative interviewers, each enhancing the other's temperament and style, probe their seniors, themselves seminal psychoanalytic thinkers. For each interview we get the end-of-career long view: a retrospective, a critical evaluation, and a summing up. Initially star struck, our interviewers grow into their own over the course of the project. They search for the person behind the work - no mortal, as Freud observed, can keep a secret - and we, the audience, read between the lines. What emerges is like psychoanalysis itself: ordinary and extraordinary, universal and quirky, expected and surprising, benign and disturbing, conformist and maverick, mundane and brilliant, simple and wise - and all entirely human. One comes away with a larger, deeper, view of this grand, strange, and compelling field. Done with care and intelligence, this volume is a significant contribution to our understanding of the contemporary history of psychoanalytic ideas."
- Alfred Margulies, M.D., Harvard University and Psychoanalytic Institute of New England East
"This valuable book captures a significant sector of that complex oral tradition through which psychoanalysts tell their own stories, speak of their own relationships with each other, and generate a context for clinical work and theorizing. Good interviewing is a craft in itself, and Rosbrow-Reich and Raymond are skilled at drawing out each of these important psychoanalytic figures so that the reader gains access to his or her distinctive personal vision. The Inward Eye will be of great relevance to anyone interested in matters psychoanalytic."
- Stephen A. Mitchell, Ph.D., Editor, Psychoanalytic Dialogues
"Responding to the earnest and shrewd curiosity of the interviewers, the interviewees were marvelously candid and self-revealing in their remarks. We hear from Merton Gill how he twice conducted mutual analyses in the style of Ferenczi; from Albert Solnit about what it was like to be an analyst and Commissioner of Mental Health of Connecticut, presented with a class action suit by the A.C.L.U. on his second day in office; from Andre Green about participating in the idiosyncratic world of French psychoanalysis; from Edward Weinshel about the importance of analytic friendships. These and other reflections provide us with an embarrassment of riches. Besides providing a wonderfully engrossing read, Raymond and Rosbrow-Reich have assembled an invaluable psychoanalytic document."
- Owen Renik, M.D., Editor-in-Chief, Psychoanalytic Quarterly
