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The Work of the Negative is a difficult book, hard to read, infused with Continental philosophy and Freudian metapsychology, containing almost no clinical material. Yet, in my view and that of others, it is of vital importance to psychoanalysis, both theoretically and clinically. Green's writing style can be infuriating; like Freud, he wanders from subject to subject, rarely providing a coherent outline of his thinking, assuming an intimate acquaintance with Freud, with Lacan, and with Hegel, among others, asking the reader to form conclusions and pull together clinical implications. French psychoanalysis has always been in dialogue with French philosophy, and it would be important for the reader to have some familiarity with Hegel, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, and Sartre. One could skip the chapter on Hegel, but the rest of the book is deeply imbued with philosophical terminology. In dialogue with Freud, especially his aborted beginnings and uncompleted late thoughts, Green aims to complete Freud's project, suggesting where he thinks Freud might have gone. I do not think Green presents a finished theory in this book; rather, he is still reaching and trying out different points of view. Freud never fully developed a theory of objects, and this is Green's central focus, the interplay of external and internal objects, internal objects as representations, and their various uses within the psyche.
There have been, I believe, three revolutionary turns in psychoanalytic theory. The first, of course, occurred with Sigmund Freud. His theory is largely intrapsychic, focusing on psychic conflict, repression as the chief method of inhibiting instincts, and symptoms resulting from the return of the repressed. Of particular importance to Green is the concept of representation: Freud uses Darstellung1 to refer to something actually