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In his Introduction, which is in fact a full-length contribution, Laurence Spurling discusses tradition in general terms and draws attention to the numerous ambiguities inherent in it, notably the fact that tradition is both the integrating, stabilising factor that holds societies, and indeed individuals, together and also that which must be rebelled against and questioned if anyone within society is to be original and creative. He also points out the dialectical relationship between tradition and treason; once an ideology or a way of life becomes a tradition, it can be treason to oppose or reject it. He then goes on to discuss the fact that psychoanalysis began as a revolutionary, subversive movement devoted to the liberation of the individual from the authority of his parents, but that nowadays 'much analytically inspired writing comes over as deeply traditional, with an overwhelming priority placed on a knowledge of and respect for what has gone before, somewhat reminiscent of the style of Talmudic scholarship.
The seven contributors (including Spurling) all have in common various things that they are not. Not one calls him (or her)self a psychoanalyst or an analytical psychologist, nor takes any cognisance of what many people would regard as the dominant psychoanalytical tradition, the one which was transmitted from Vienna by Anna Freud and Heinz Hartmann and which is now represented by the Contemporary Freudians in this country and by the ego-psychologists in America. (The number of analysts who are not listed in the Name Index is impressive: Kohut, Kernberg, Hartmann, Bowlby, Meltzer; Fairbairn only scrapes in with one reference, and Anna Freud is mentioned only as her father's patient and as Klein's opponent.)