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William James made the observation that a theory often runs through three states in its career. First it is attacked as absurd. Then, in its second stage, it is admitted to be true but obvious and insignificant. And in its final stage it is considered to be so important that its adversaries claim that they discovered it themselves. I believe interpersonal theory is now in the third stage (1:13).
This collection of papers by Edgar A. Levenson, according to Irwin Hirsch “the leading interpersonal psychoanalytic thinker of our era” (2:732), represents the first of a series of books to be published under the aegis of Contemporary Psychoanalysis Books, a division of the White Institute's journal Contemporary Psychoanalysis (founded in 1964 and edited by Arthur H. Feiner), in which most of the 19 papers originally appeared. “They reflect his abiding interest in what analysts do, as distinct from what they say they do” (3:XI), claims A. H. Feiner in the preface; or, as Earl G. Witenberg writes in the foreword, “his concern … that the interpersonal viewpoint not be lost in the miasma of ecumenism currently sweeping the field” (4:IX). As Levenson states in the introduction, “psychoanalysts pay insufficient attention to their participation”, countertransference is “a continuous dimension of the interaction”, and distortion “a collusive agreement”: in other words, a point of view “essentially incompatible with both object relations and drive theory” (5:XVI). As a matter of fact, Levenson's work is not only very stimulating and a real pleasure to read, but also so complex and articulated (the work of a “gadfly”, as Jay R. Greenberg defined him in 1987; 6: 691), that I can not help but identify with Phyllis Gross-kurth's confession to have only “few qualifications” (7:193) for reviewing his book. As a supervisee of Gaetano Benedetti (see, for example, 8) and Johannes Cremerius (9), who place much emphasis on the analyst's work in terms of process and relationship, I have felt the