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The compilation and editing of this large book is a massive achievement; Pearl King and Riccardo Steiner have earned the gratitude not only of those working in the field of psychoanalysis but also of those in the wider field of scientific research. The book presents us with a very detailed and unexpurgated account of the various controversies in the British Psycho-Analytical Society that came to a head during the Second World War. It may also throw light on the more general matter of controversies in various spheres of learning, how they are sometimes contaminated by more personal factors, and perhaps how they may be in some measure resolved. This wider relevance of the psychoanalytic discussions is brought out by Pearl King in her Introduction, and in this connexion she refers to the very valuable 1985 paper of her co-editor, Riccardo Steiner. Her brief introduction is preceded by a useful series of biographical notes on 28 of the participants in the discussions.
Pearl King follows her introduction with a valuable and fair description of the historical background leading up to the Freud–Klein controversies. The central role of Ernest Jones, not merely as founder of the British Society, but as its undisputed leader for 25 years is described clearly. As Edward Glover once said in my hearing: 'The trouble about Jones is that he does everything so much better than anyone else'. Apart from his promotion of the science of psychoanalysis Jones was also the man, as King makes clear, mainly responsible for the recognition of its scientific status by the British medical profession and its exclusive right to the designation 'psychoanalysis'.
In the first years after the British Society was founded in 1919 there was no organized training but it was recognized that a personal analysis was necessary for a would-be analytic practitioner. In order to obtain this most of the early British analysts went to Vienna, Berlin or Budapest. In 1925 the Stracheys (James and Alix, no