Ego at the Center of Clinical Technique

Engaging patients in the process of self-understanding and providing them with tools to continue therapeutic work is at the center of Fred Busch's clinical approach. Dr. Busch shows how therapists too often interpret more from what they understand rather than what the patient is ready to hear, and that many aspects of the psychoanalytic method have been geared more toward maintaining the analyst as omniscient and omnipotent observer rather than toward attempting to engage the patient's ego with the process. This important new work shows us how to change that perspective in order to work with patients as partners in a truly collaborative endeavor.

The noted author and professor Norman Maclean once said 'A good teacher is a tough guy who cares very deeply about something that is hard to understand.' In order to deepen our understanding of the ego's role in the analytic process, Fred Busch has met both qualifications. Recognizing that the nature of the ego and its place in technique are even more challenging than comprehending the unconscious, Dr. Busch has joined those who fortunately picked up the detail and direction made possible by Freud's dramatic revision of the theory of anxiety and has added his own illumination to stepping stones on this invariably resisted path. Helping us to depend less on intuition and our own externalized unconscious resonance and to rely more on the demonstrable data, Dr. Busch examines our theoretical concepts and strives to make them more consonant with what is 'most observable and easily knowable by the patient,' the ego and its significance. This is a contribution that not only analysts should own and read but the many professionals who strive to apply the analytic theory of conflict and defense to best advantage. Fred Busch greatly facilitates our work by bringing these concepts up to date and by providing us with clinical examples., Dr. Busch, an award-winning psychoanalytic teacher with a deep background in developmental theory and research, demonstrates the value of an ego-focused technique. By recalling the therapeutic centrality of working with and through the patient's ego, Dr. Busch connects the surviving riches of past psychoanalytic formulations with the future promise of psychoanalysis as a therapy and a theory of the mind. He uses well-chosen clinical vignettes to illustrate the inherent flaws of some current therapeutic fads and the technical value of his approach.

Dr. Fred Busch is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute, where he received his psychoanalytic training. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, and completed a Post-Doctoral Fellow-ship at the Reiss-Davis Child Study Center. A frequent contributor to the psychoanalytic literature, Dr. Busch is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of the American Psycho-analytic Association. He is currently in the full-time practice of psychoanalysis in Ann Arbor, Michigan.