Review of Chimeras and Other Writings: Selected Papers of Sheldon Bach

Reviews the book, Chimeras and Other Writings: Selected Papers of Sheldon Bach by Sheldon Bach (2016). This book offers a timely selection of the writings of Sheldon Bach, an eminent psychoanalyst whose work spans and reflects the history of contemporary Freudian theory. This invaluable volume charts the development of Bach’s distinctive perspective, from the theoretically intricate early papers to more recent contributions that offer a refined distillation of what, in retrospect, always occupied the core of Bach’s sensibility: the crucial importance of the analyst’s willingness to enter into and to tolerate the experiential world of the patient, over a sustained period of time, in order to achieve lasting change. More than anything else, it is this capacity, what Bach calls “analytic love,” that is enriched in the reader through a sustained encounter with the writings in this book. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)