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Delightful quotations from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince head chapters throughout this book; they explain the title, encapsulate the psychoanalytic process and give a flavour of the liveliness of the book's content. To ‘tame’ is to differentiate and so to identify and know the uniqueness of the object, and thus, also of the subject. Only then is solitude meaningful. Liveliness may seem a strange word to use in the context of the deadening effects of separation anxiety, but Quinodoz's detailed and illuminating exploration of object loss leads to the feeling of buoyancy he describes in the last part of the book, so that reading the book offers a sort of experiential parallel to the process of working through separation anxiety.
In the first section of the book Quinodoz gives a general introduction to separation anxiety, provides a comprehensive clinical example and defines his terms. The word separation is used for the parting of whole object from whole subject and differentiation is used to describe the internal distiction between ego and object. Prior to differentiation, relating is maintained by means of projective identification and separation in this case leads to loss of parts of the ego and to fragmentation. Separation in a differentiated subject leads to normal mourning. Although theoretically differentiation precedes the ability to separate, Quinodoz points out that in clinical practice the processes are most often alternating or occurring simultaneously. In fact, throughout the book he is at pains to point out the importance of using theory to clarify thinking, while at the same time attending to the unique individual on the couch. Theory is, by definition, a generalisation from a multitude of clinical examples, and the generalisation has to be dismantled for each individual in the clinical setting. As Bion said, we strive to approach each patient without memory or desire.
The second section of the book concentrates on the different psychoanalytic