Independent Women in British Psychoanalysis: Creativity and Authenticity at Work, edited by Elizabeth Wolf and Barbie Antonis,  Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2024,  178 pp.

This imaginative, accessibly written and rich book introduces the substantial inter-related body of work of seven pioneer women psychoanalysts—Ella Sharpe, Marjorie Brierley, Paula Heimann, Marion Milner, Pearl King, Nina Coltart and Enid Balint—in the Independent Tradition of the British Psychoanalytical Society. The contributors include two male analysts, Jonathan Sklar and Ken Robinson, both well-known writers in this tradition.

The collection constitutes a compact legacy, seen through the eyes of the independent-minded contributors, of these seven female analysts, some of whom are less known to the more recently qualified, and to analysts outside the UK. The Independent Tradition of the British Psychoanalytical Society, was first called the ‘Middle Group.” This name came from the Controversial Discussions , (King & Steiner, 1991) where analysts debated the ideas of Melanie Klein and Anna Freud. The Middle Group—with prominent members, such as Donald Winnicott, Michael Balint, Ronald Fairbairn, Sylvia Payne, the above-mentioned women and many others—didn't fully align with either side and took a balanced open approach to psychoanalysis, valuing freedom of thought. The book clearly conveys the evolving technical and theoretical language of this group. I particularly valued the distinctions made between similar but different concepts, e.g. unconscious communication versus transference/countertransference versus projective identification. Creativity is not seen as sublimation of drive or simply reparation. Some have quipped that the Independent group was not only the middle group but also a muddled group, lacking a solid theoretical basis. This book joins others (Kohon, 1986; Williams et al., 2012) to show that this is far from the case. This group, the Independent Group, is an association of analysts which draws on many theories and places much value on an experimental spirit of discovering old and new concepts for oneself.

Part I—Setting the Scene—provides a window