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‘This is an extraordinary book,’ writes Joan Raphael-Leff, introducing her collection from over 90 contributors. It is extraordinary. Psychodynamic clinicians, from a variety of trainings, from all over the world, were solicited by personal invitation or through newsletters to write on ‘a topic close to his or her heart’ (p. xxiii). Raphael-Leff describes the response as overwhelming - more material reached her than could be incorporated in one volume. Perhaps, because of the professional reticence normally practised by the writers, many evidently relish the proffered freedom to narrate, reflect or speculate.
The collection is introduced by two poems. Marion Milner associates to the image of the mechanical voice at the Embankment Tube station shouting ‘Mind the gap!’ The poem alludes to the importance of change, uncertainty and creative chaos, ending with the lines:
I minded when I did not mind
That the matter did not matter any more
But I do know that it's
Out of the gaps
That new things grow.
The poem by D.W. Winnicott, written while a medical student, entitled ‘A Reminder to the Binder’, ends with the lines:
Binder, year by year who bindest
Reams of closely written sheets,