Hoffman's Ritual and Spontaneity: Three Reviews and a Response

Abstract

In this issue we introduce a new format for the JAPA Review of Books. In our first Book Forum, Irwin Z. Hoffman's Ritual and Spontaneity in the Psychoanalytic Process is evaluated by three reviewers—Jessica Benjamin, Lawrence Friedman, and Louis Sass. Each provides in-depth commentary on this important new contribution to the psychoanalytic literature. Their reviews are followed by an equally thoughtful reply by the author. In this manner the dialectical-constructivist approach to psychoanalytic work that Hoffman outlines is considered and reconsidered, challenged and defended, and defined and redefined through the perspectives of some of our field's leading thinkers. A particularly unique feature of this dialogue is the backdrop of death and mortality that has long been ignored or minimized by psychoanalytic writers but is brought into bold relief in Hoffman's work. We are certain that readers will be enriched by this exchange. In future issues we hope to repeat this format for other worthy and provocative new contributions to psychoanalytic thought.