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To write about one's analyst, even after an interval of more than 20 years, is far from straightforward. The pitfalls of idealization, denigration, sibling rivalry, collusion and narcissistic identification all mitigate against objectivity. On the other hand, to have been in a position to test a particular analytic approach in vivo must count for something, and being a patient can stimulate curiosity and a fascination with the analyst's ideas which, with the passage of time, may reflect mature internalization that goes beyond acting out or oedipal intrusion. But if I stray outside the bounds of balanced exposition, perhaps due allowances will be made.
My paper falls into three parts. Firstly, I summarize Rycroft's critique of psychoanalysis as he encountered it in the period 1940-1960 while training and working within the British Psycho-Analytical Society. Secondly, I try to elaborate the theoretical perspective and psychotherapeutic methods which he developed in opposition to the conventional psychoanalysis of his day. Thirdly, I link these ideas to themes in contemporary psychoanalytic psychotherapy, in an attempt to show how many of his ideas have passed into common currency, and thus, without forming a distinct school or movement or acquiring overt followers, he has significantly contributed to the Zeitgeist.
First, I must say something about Rycroft's style. Le style c'est l'homme certainly applies to him in both his literary and therapeutic personas. Clarity of thought, preciseness of phrase, freshness, wit, avoidance of cliché and jargon, a fondness for parentheses, an ability to stack one clause neatly upon another as each sentence wends its way to a satisfying conclusion - to read Rycroft is to be taken on a walk through intellectual territory with which he is so utterly at home that he can point out interesting anomalies and geographical curiosities without straying beyond the modest limits which he usually sets himself. There was something quintessentially