The Dead Mother: The Work of André Green: Edited by Gregorio Kohon. London and New York:  Routledge, in Association with the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London, 1999,  248 pp., $28.00.

The title of this book refers to André Green's “The Dead Mother,” his best-known paper among English-speaking analysts. In a lengthy interview conducted by the editor, Gregorio Kohon, Green refers to that paper as the most successful he has written; he adds that it represents “the confluence of a personal experience while I was having my third analysis, of my own clinical experience with patients, and, finally, a theoretical experience”—namely, “the impact of Winnicott's paper on transitional objects.” It is therefore fitting that one of Green's papers on Winnicott is included here.

Five of the book's eleven chapters are clinical essays more or less inspired by selected aspects of the Dead Mother paper, but mostly elaborating the authors’ favorite topics. These range from the reconstruction of trauma (Modell) to violence and hysteria (Perelberg). These articles, though interesting in their own right, do not convey the scope of the Green paper and have little to say about some of its most original, wide-ranging, and controversial aspects (e.g., the patient's search for meaning, the compensatory emphasis on intellectual achievements and creativity, and the central role of oedipal fantasy themes). A few of the chapters deal with more general and theoretical aspects of Green's work. Michael Parsons discusses Green's central concept of “the work of the negative” and highlights its positive and creative role in individual psychic functioning. Martin Bergmann puts some of Green's main concepts, particularly that of decathexis, in historical context, and shows how it is central to the Dead Mother paper.

But the best and most extensive introduction to the work of André Green is provided by the book's longest chapter, Kohon's interview. There we get a clear and lively account of Green's background,