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This book gives a comprehensive overview of the theoretical developments in one strand of British psychoanalytic thinking and the individual contributions of its leading figures. This double focus is both its strength and its major frustration. Rayner, through a process of informed selection and construction, provides a valuable account of many thinkers while outlining and making an argument for the shared set of positions which unite in diversity a now established tradition. Historically and theoretically the author displays an impressive grasp of the area and, personally, he reveals a commitment to it which is inspiring. The Independent Mind is a clear guide to the debates and to the analysts who have shaped British psychoanalysis. Its chosen form seems to propose it as a compendium, an enumeration of positions, but it is rather more than that. In its delineation of a set of common concerns it elaborates and defines a discursive arena along with the practices that have supported it and the issues which have made it distinctive. Rayner, in selecting and discussing Independent concerns, further establishes that group and its emphases: he gives us a coherence marked by a loosely shared set of concerns. In doing so he becomes one of the architects of its chosen domain, both past and future.
Of equal interest is the perspective Rayner offers on the distinctiveness of the British school. He insists on the peculiarly British heritage of the analysts he discusses, arguing for their place in a tradition of experimentation, of testing, and of the authenticity of experience. His approach here is somewhat at odds with the orientation of much recent philosophical and social theorising, but it sets an agenda for further socio-cultural discussions of the place of psychoanalysis in British cultural and theoretical debate and of the emergence of its specific concerns. For, in describing one group, Rayner also succeeds in demonstrating the common positions which inform a national or