Commitment and Compassion in Psychoanalysis (Selected Papers of Edward M. Weinshel)

Over the course of his distinguished career, Edward Weinshel has been a moral and intellectual force in contemporary psychoanalysis and an outspoken opponent of current trends in and out of the field toward dehumanization and deindividualization. Thinking and working within the mainstream American ego psychology paradigm, Weinshel epitomizes what Leonard Shengold characterizes as the "controlled moral passion" of the psychoanalyst, the ability "to care with an intensity that is employed with tactful empathy, according to awareness of the needs and vulnerability of the individual patient." Commitment and Compassion in Psychoanalysis, under the editorship of Robert Wallerstein, brings together 14 of Weinshel's major papers. The six clinical papers reprinted in the collection address a kaleidoscope of common personality organizations and propensities which, in their extreme variants, motivate individuals to seek psychoanalytic assistance. Covering topics that include "neurotic equivalents" of necrophilia, negation, lying, "gaslighting" (brainwashing), perceptual distortion during analysis, and inconsolability, these papers reflect Weinshel's belief that theoretical advance must emerge from the matrix of clinical experience rather than being an exercise in armchair theorizing. Hence they revolve around patient descriptions that are detailed and richly evocative, case histories that, in Wallerstein's words, "come alive in the reading."These clinical expositions are supplemented by eight theoretical papers in which Weinshel gives expression to the metapsychological paradigm of ego psychology as it existed in the 70s and 80s. Four papers from the early 70s cover "the ego in health and normality," the transference neurosis, and various aspects of the training analysis. Taken together they are significant markers of the period in which they were written, and they bear witness to the lively intellectual debates of an earlier era of psychoanalytic history. The remaining four papers, published between 1984 and 1992, chronicle Weinshel's evolving conception of the psychoanalytic process. Here we find, inter alia, Weinshel's notion of resistance as the clinical unit of the psychoanalytic process, his elucidation of specifically "psychoanalytic change" as it grows out of the psychoanalytic process, and his affirmation of modern conflict theory in the face of theoretical pluralism.Carefully edited by Robert Wallerstein and including an introductory essay by Leonard Shengold, Commitment and Compassion in Psychoanalysis brings to contemporary debates the voice of a principled exemplar of the psychoanalytic calling. Balancing intellectual acuity with a profoundly caring temperament, and augmenting respect for the psychoanalytic tradition with a flair for original ideas, Edward Weinshel speaks to all who wrestle daily with the burdens, challenges, and healing promise of the impossible profession.