You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Ann D’Ercole’s two-volume work on Clara Thompson’s development and legacy offers an exploration of the life and contributions of a remarkable woman and psychoanalyst. D’Ercole presents a narrative following “the practice of an oral history,” gathering a vast amount of published and unpublished biographical data to articulate the voice of Clara Thompson and argue for her pivotal role in the development of psychoanalysis. The work features interviews and correspondence, testimonials of friends and colleagues, sections of Sandor Ferenczi’s clinical diaries relating to Thompson, as well as reflections on Thompson’s own scholarly work.
D’Ercole, an analyst from New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, comes to this work through her own analytic history of being in analysis, taught, and supervised by people with strong connection and admiration for Thompson. She also shares Thompson’s love of Provincetown, MA, the site of Thompson’s summer home shared for ten years with the married artist Henry Major, fondly remembered as a scene of joyful socializing with colleagues, friends, artists, and others. In volume one, D’Ercole asks the questions of a good interpersonal analyst: How did this person come to be who she is? She describes the dynamics of the Thompson household, and traces the sociocultural factors, historical context, class, region, religion, schooling, etc. that shaped her life and career. She presents the many contacts and opportunities that facilitated
Thompson’s psychic growth and richly lived life, including her three analyses.
Volume two begins in 1933, following her analysis with Sandor Ferenczi and his death. Thompson returns to America, and D’Ercole focuses the second book on her professional evolution (with one chapter on her life in Provincetown), continuing to draw important threads from her earlier development to her career as clinician, thinker, and leader. D’Ercole makes a case for Thompson’s importance in psychoa