Introduction

AGIP, the Association for Group and Individual Psychotherapy, has from its inception in 1974 included in its training syllabus the subject ‘Fairy Tale’. Trainees choose a myth, legend or fairy story, and analyse it through the three lenses of Freudian, Kleinian and Jungian theory. This exercise is in line with AGIP's tradition of breadth and inclusivity, in terms not only of the range of psychoanalytical theories taught, but in the attention paid to the overarching metapsychologies of the theorists.

The ‘Fairy Tale’ work, which allows considerable freedom to trainees in the way they choose to present it, produces strong and lasting understandings of aspects of theory and of the minds of the theorists. Still more powerfully, it evokes and illuminates the role of symbol, metaphor and drama through the characters and their interplay, the structure and unfolding of the story itself, and through its deeper underlying meanings. The study turns out to be one not only of theoretical but of clinical illumination: transference and countertransference, emotional response to the other, nuances of meaning in communication, all are here.

These stories by their very endurance bear witness to their wide and universal meaning for humanity. And each trainee has inevitably chosen, wittingly or otherwise - and never with the fuller understanding that later emerges - a story of deep personal significance for him or herself.

Fittingly, our Annual Lecture in 2008 centred on this theme. The chosen myth was that of The Odyssey, that great quest for identity, kinship and truth - and, as Meg Harris Williams (2005) has it, of reunification with one's Muse. The papers given by our two speakers, Jean White and Carol Leader, are presented here. Jean White was invited as our guest speaker. Her paper is written from a contemporary Independent, Lacanian and post-Kleinian perspective, the latter strand influenced by Bion's radical new theories of mind. Carol Leader, an AGIP member, speaks from the Jungi