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Like Queequeg and Ishmael in “Moby Dick,” Lacan and Winnicott are strange bedfellows. In this collection of nine essays, various authors find common ground between these two divergent thinkers. Lacan, the enigmatic and distant “father,” and Winnicott, the warm and nurturing “mother.” As Kirshner writes in the first sentence of the introduction:
The theme of this volume is the possibility of a psychoanalytic treatment that can move between two seemingly incompatible theories of the origins and structure of the human psyche…For Winnicott, the essence of psychoanalytic practice was the here-and-now, dyadic relationship of analyst and patient, with its recapitulation of early infant development, contained within the setting of a holding environment. By contrast, Lacan emphasized close attention to the language of the analysand and placed the analyst in a nonrelational position as the other.” (p. ix)
Kirshner's hope is that an appreciation of both theories can inform a dialectic in the mind of the analyst: “conceptualizing the dual role of analyst as other and as intersubjective participant represents the basic challenge of a dialectical reading of the two theories” (p. xii). He added that “it would be a great loss if their works were left as isolated historical relics in the stream of fragmented therapeutic methods and diverse approaches that characterize the current psychoanalytic scene” (p. xvii).
My own work in understanding Lacan intersected with Lewis Kirshner. About 15 years ago I heard Kirshner speak at an annual convention of the American Psychological Association. His topic was the Lacanian unconscious, and listening to him I felt moments of understanding out of the fog that I had experienced in reading Lacan. When I returned to Arizona I called Lewis and asked if he would be available for telephone supervision. I had a patient in analysis and wanted to experience this treatment through a Lacanian lens. For the next year and half it became Friday mornings with Lew