Psychoanalysis With a French Accent

Reviews the book, The Practice of Psychoanalysis by Thierry Bokanowski and translated by David Alcorn (see record 2006-20669-000). Readers who are most familiar and comfortable with the version of psychoanalysis that has been dominant in the United States for much of the last half century, that is, "ego psychology," will find Thierry Bokanowski's slim volume, The Practice of Psychoanalysis, originally published in 1998 as De la Pratique Analytique, something of a challenge. Part of the challenge has to do with Bokanowski's sometimes convoluted exposition; one sentence early on contains 219 words, broken up by nine semicolons and six sets of parentheses. However, the challenge extends beyond form to content. Bokanowski approaches his topic from a perspective that emphasizes aspects of psychoanalysis that have found an appreciative audience in Europe and South America but rarely have been discussed at meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), the self-styled guardian of psychoanalytic orthodoxy in the United States. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)