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Victoria Hamilton's The Analyst's Preconscious (1996) should be recognized as a watershed event in the literature, but it has been all too easy to overlook, perhaps because the modest title gives no clue to its scope. It is a thorough and probing investigation of analysts' operating frameworks, explicit and implicit assumptions, interpretive priorities, and, indeed, their confusion of tongues. It could have been a simple attitude survey, and Hamilton did use a short questionnaire, but she also conducted interviews of up to two hours with 65 analysts (selected to represent variations in theoretical affiliation, age, and experience) in four cities: London, New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles (where she, British born and trained, practiced until recently). Her study is thorough in the way that only a study that began as a doctoral dissertation can be.
Despite this ambitious effort at data collection, Hamilton was able to avoid being overwhelmed by it, finding creative ways to discover and communicate the illuminations buried therein. The result is a model of functional research that preserves the flavor of these analysts' individual struggles with patients, other analysts, and with themselves. Through sophisticated methods of data reduction, Hamilton is able to bring out the deep structure of analysts' thinking.
Long interview excerpts fill much of the book. These are framed by Hamilton in essays that not only offer a perspective on the material but also expertly connect it with the literature. This opens a unique window onto what analysts really think about what they do and about each other.
Her purpose was “to systematize the beliefs and actions that are typical of practicing American and British analysts today” (between 1988 and 1990). She found that “the area between [their] avowed theoretical orientation” and actual clinical practice “reveals the muddled overlaps and uncomfortable, precarious coexistence of parts of belief systems.” She could easily have deplore