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The political philosopher Isaiah Berlin (1953) uses an age-old metaphor that offers an engaging way of introducing Marco Conci and his most recent book, awarded the American Board & Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize in 2020. Berlin refers to a distinction between styles of thinking drawn from a quote of the early Greek poet Archilochus: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing” (p. 1). Whereas the fox sees multiplicity and paradox at every turn, the hedgehog integrates a multitude of ideas into a single principle, an unending pursuit of a general theory that the fox inevitably upends. This question of monism vs. pluralism has been thematic in psychoanalysis since its beginning. As our first great hedgehog systematizer, Freud integrated a theory of mind and culture, a method of research, and a mode of treatment under a general theoretical frame. He identified several shibboleths, crucial theoretical tenants for determining inclusion or exclusion, to cull numerous competing hedgehogs from the psychoanalytic guild. And yet, throughout its history, psychoanalysis has had its foxes, thinkers who defy categorization, are not easily pinned into any specific system of psychoanalytic thought even while they stay nimbly and playfully within our psychoanalytic family. Freud had his Ferenczi, Klein had her Winnicott, Sullivan had his Levenson, all gadflies to the systemization of theory, independent thinkers who defied sectarian shibboleths.
As a historian of psychoanalysts and their ideas, psychoanalyst Marco Conci plays a unique role. His current book, much more than simply a compilation of his articles written in English, offers an essential overview of his foxy thinking on the field of “international psychoanalysis,” his vision for a new kind of pluralistic approach to psychoanalytic ideas (psychoanalysts and their thinking) through dialogue. Conci offers this book to address a pervasive problem in psychoanalysis as a discipline. How do we learn fr