The Not So Small Differences of Narcissism: A Discussion of Rosine Perelberg's “Narcissistic Configurations: Violence and its Absence in Treatment“1

We are fortunate here in the Bay Area analytic therapy community to have a fairly rich variety of analytic perspectives, and an unusually harmonious attitude towards the plurality of viewpoints. But in the conversation that takes place here by the Bay, it is inevitable that some analytic models are better represented than others. What Rosine Perelberg brings us is a sophisticated branch of French psychoanalytic theory and practice, best known to us through the work of Andre Green. But what makes Perelberg's work so useful to us, apart from the sheer vibrancy and synthetic agility of her thought and the originality of her clinical voice, is the way in which her grasp of French psychoanalytic concepts is founded on an immersion in British object-relational and contemporary Freudian practices. Viewed through an Anglo-Saxon lens, the French ideas come to life in a distinctive way; while in Perelberg's hands, the language of French theory likewise recasts the familiar concerns of Object Relations analysts in a new light.

We may surmise further that, along with her London domicile, Perelberg's Latin American roots also play a significant role in making her a lively and important translator of concepts between cultures, while her background in anthropology, and in political and social theory, undoubtedly contributes to her special facility in being able to move so skillfully between metapsychological considerations and the pragmatic demands of clinical theory.