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This book's title declares the author's love of words and phrases. The main title (nothing to do with Verdi) may seem grandiloquent, until it becomes apparent that Bollas is already urging 'the analyst's celebration of the analysand' (the title of Chapter 4) and that 'destiny', as opposed to 'fate', is chosen to include the notions of unconscious intention and striving, which apply to the least of us and not only to heroic figures such as Aeneas and Napoleon. The subtitle's 'idiom' has here the meaning, justifiable etymologically, of 'that which is uniquely personal'.
Bollas needs these extensions of meaning to re-think psychoanalytic theory in his own original way. Indeed his originality is shown in his clinical approach as well as in his formulations of theory. A difficult case or a piece of infuriating behaviour, successfully or unsuccessfully treated, will lead him to new thought upon theory and the insight he gains is at once turned back upon other cases.
The book is in two parts. The first five chapters have several new concepts, new as technical terms—'destiny drive', 'futures', 'topographic return', 'idiom-moves'—besides some which Bollas proposed in his previous book—'the transformational object', 'the unthought known'. So in the Introduction he suggests that these chapters be read in sequence, where the concepts are spelled out as they first occur. The six chapters of Part 2 can be read in