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Invited by fort da to present a paper on André Green, we began to explore his papers in English. Immediately we were struck by the extent to which our difficulty reading them was exacerbated by the fact that they were without context. For example, they didn't appear in English in a meaningful chronology. The Fabric of Affect in the Psychoanalytic Discourse, a book that was originally published as Le discours vivant in 1973, was only published in English in 1999. A second major work from 1973, L'enfant de ça, written with Jean-Luc Donnet, has yet to appear in English. In addition, there are differences between Green's translated works and works of the same title in French. Most notably, the English collection of papers, On Private Madness (1986), differs significantly from the French collection, La folie privée (1990). These factors leave us in a situation filled with lacunae. Had we taken all his papers and thrown them out a window in a high wind, some would have been swept away. Others would have landed in no easily discernible order. Faced with this dilemma, we consulted the commentaries on Green's work by Macias (Green, 1994b), Jackson (1991), Duparc (1996), Hunter (Green, 1994a), Urribarri (Green, 1998-1999), Lucchin (2000), as well as other diverse sources.
Green has been a prolific thinker and writer for more than half a century. As we began to look at his works in chronological order, we saw a clear development through the years that has a solid foundation in his earliest works. Due to the limitations of space here, we will address only his most foundational works, which were completed by 1973. Our aim is to smooth the reader's progress by creating a map through this fascinating and complex foundation. We have followed Green's own designation of works that are central to his æuvre, and we have explored the directions in which those