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Thomas Ogden has contributed in a valuable manner to psychoanalytic literature over the last few decades. This book is his latest work which comprises of an Introduction and nine chapters, most of which are previously published papers of the author between the years 2016–2020. The remaining two chapters and the Introduction are new.
As they cover diverse themes the reader is likely to experience them as stand-alone pieces and not so much as an integrated book, although the author does attempt to knit things together. I found the book to be fairly easily accessible. The author illustrates the ideas he presents with many case vignettes. He clearly has a literary bent as is also demonstrated by his interest in the works of poets and writers, two of whom, Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson, are discussed later in this collection.
The author tells us in the Preface that he’s proceeding to develop his ideas along the path shown by Winnicott and Bion, the two analysts he credits with shifting from an epistemological type of psychoanalysis to an ontological one (more on this distinction later) which, according to the author represents a “revolutionary change in psychoanalytic theory and practice “(p. xiv)
The author then, in subsequent chapters, offers his “creative readings” of these two authors, mostly of Winnicott, and then provides illustrations of the way he himself practices. In addition to the frequent reliance on the works of this duo in the various chapters of the book, we are also provided with brief accounts of the author’s understanding
of the selective works of Freud, Klein, and Fairbairn as they bear upon the main topic of this book, namely, the “sensibility that [facilitates] states of mind in which patient and analyst more fully come to life in the analytic process” (p. xiv)
The book suffers from a central confusion, or perhaps even fallacy. Ogden claims to be deriving his ideas primarily from the writings of these two British analysts, but his understanding of