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Upon beginning this work by Thomas Ogden, the reader is immersed in the author's analytic field, resembling a waking dream thought of Bion or Ferro, or, to use the author's word, a reverie. It would thus be presumptuous to be overly descriptive or interpretive, for, as he says over and over, matters in consciousness are in constant evolution—including, of course, pathways to the unconscious unlived life. This evolution appears equally in clinical and theoretical matters, as well as in literary works. Chapters 2 through 7 of this collection are articles first published between 2009 and 2015. The first, on truth and psychic change, is offered in lieu of an introduction; the eighth and last is an interview with a colleague from the author's institute.
Emerging from Freud and Klein, but especially from Winnicott and Bion, Ogden's work is internally expansive, making clinically relevant the analyst's various associational pathways to connect with his analysands. This collection of essays brings the reader face to face with the author's analytic way of thinking, putting him alongside many contemporary analysts both here in America and abroad. To put it briefly and much too simply, the idea of the unlived life is derived and elaborated from Winnicott's fear of breakdown and, similarly, the concept of reverie from Bion's notion of the waking dream thought. Basically, early maternal unavailability, the vicissitudes of separation-individuation, and other early trauma remain unrepresented or ablated in the service of making aspects of ongoing life possible. However, this way of living works at various costs for the fully lived life, costs an effective analysis can reduce or at least provide additional options for managing. To be clear, Ogden is not putting any theoretical or technical rules in place; rather, he is