Psychoanalytic Healing, Love, Life, and Death: Commentary on Paper by Sheldon Bach

Abstract

In his seminal clinical writings on psychoanalysis, Sheldon Bach transcends the limiting confines of individual and parochial schools of psychoanalysis. Both in “On Digital Consciousness” and in his 2006 Getting From There to Here: Analytic Love, Analytic Process, we see a strong relational dimension in Bach's work (see also Bach 1985 and 1994), though he comes from firmly within the psychoanalytic mainstream. Bach's writings speak to clinicians across schools of thought, are clinically near to experience and are often moving. While he makes occasional mention of his contemporaries, Bach is grounded in more traditional references and only hints at his intellectual connection to relational and intersubjective theorists. One purpose of this commentary is to reflect on Bach's contribution to contemporary psychoanalysis and to draw out the connections between his work and the work of those within the broader relational and intersubjective community of psychoanalysis.