From Herbert Wyman’s Editor’s Introduction
“There is an aspect of psychoanalytic thinking…that should now be made explicit: The era of the domination of American ego psychology, which found its culmination in the ideas of Heinz Hartmann, is over”(1999)
With these words Dr Manuel Furer marked the transition of psychoanalysis from the field into which he entered as a candidate in the 1950’s to the field in which he had emerged as an important leader throughout the subsequent half century.
The transition is ongoing and has not been easy. The first two sections of this volume depict Furer’s efforts realistically to integrate this transition, to separate out new ideas from old, to criticize some new theories and to support others, all the while striving to preserve what he held to be the fundamental clinical techniques of psychoanalysis.
The first part of this volume “Psychoanalytic Technique in the World of Pluralism” contains papers devoted to the discussion of various theoreticians and their influence toward the progression or retrogression of the field. The second part of this volume “Psychoanalytic Training” extends this discussion into the field of education, and conveys Furer’s dedication as a teacher, supervisor, and administrator.
Readers may well recognize Manuel Furer more readily from the third part of this volume “Psychoanalysis and the Developing Child” Here will be found his most important contributions toward the study of the emotional disorders of early childhood, and also his work on Separation/Individuation with Margaret Mahler. As was well known to every child who met him, and every adult who worked with him, Manny Furer had special gifts of warmth and empathy. His signature concept of “emotional refueling” conveys these gifts.
The introductions to the Freud lectures and to the Furer Symposium offer biographical portraits of one of our generation’s most multitalented psychoanalysts.
Herbert M Wyman MD
August 2021
