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Once, as we were sitting in the cafe, we debated the difference between ‘mental space’, ‘internal world’ and ‘psychic apparatus’. We concluded that it would be impossible to sp eakof an internal world without the concept of mental space. And ‘psychic apparatus’? To this, Anna Resnik answered: ‘The mind is the all-purpose crank-handle’.
This is a lovely book, original without being idiosyncratic, personal without being sentimental. Salomon Resnik trained in Buenos Aires and encountered the international psychoanalytic world first at the Geneva congress of 1955, at which Bion presented an early paper on schizophrenic thought. He determined to come to Britain, which he did via Paris, to study with Klein, Rosenfeld and others, subsequently working in Paris and Italy. While Resnik's ideas spring from the Kleinian tradition, his thinking and writing are also formed by the Continental tradition with its roots in philosophical questions. This marrying of the almost philosophy-free English tradition and the sometimes obstruse and over-philosophical Continental (and particularly French) tradition underlines the extent to which philosophical questions are at the root of psychoanalytic theory and practice.
Resnik tells us that this book arose out of seminars he gave in Paris, often followed by discussions in a nearby cafe. The idea of mental space is itself a philosophical conundrum since the mind is non-spatial; yet, as Resnik points out in the above quotation, we cannot manage without it. Those who want to pursue the philosophical aspects of this problem are referred to the book of the same title by Robert Young. Resnik instead studies how the idea of space emerges in psychoanalytic practice. Each chapter heading introduces a new aspect of space: ‘A space for psychoanalysis’, ‘A space for thinking’, ‘A space for dreaming’, etc.
Resnik aims to ‘invite you into my workshop’, not only through clinical material but by reflecting on his experience as analyst. The reader will get an i