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During the academic years 1980-85 a research/study group met monthly under the auspices of the Psychoanalytic Research and Development Fund. The 17-member group, chaired by Blum, developed ‘an organised, systematic investigation of the theory, technique and concept of reconstruction’. Throughout the book there are significant attributions to the group and its opinions, but responsibility for this monograph is the work of Blum himself. There are eight chapters, three of which are analytic case reports meant to illustrate the role of reconstruction in the psychoanalytic process. In the first chapter Blum presents an extensive list of questions raised by the working group regarding the role of reconstruction in the process of psychoanalysis. These issues orient the reader to some of the discussion in the subsequent material of the book.
Blum develops the history of the concept of reconstruction, beginning with Freud's early theory of trauma as the causative agent in psychoneurosis, and emphasises the limitations of Freud's use of the archaeological metaphor. He follows the precepts on reconstruction established by Freud as they were subsequently elaborated chiefly by Kris, Greenacre, and Blum himself. He develops a distinction between construction and reconstruction, terms which others have used synonymously. For Blum the former is an hypothesis developing in the mind of the analyst as he/she observes and responds to the totality of the analysand's material and experience. Many constructions are silently entertained by the analyst until offered to the patient in the form of an intervention, at which time Blum views it as a reconstruction. (Moore & Fine, 1990, prefer the term ‘construction’ to describe the entire process, and at most use the two terms synonymously.)
For Blum a genetic interpretation involves a single or specific intepretive comment narrowly focused on a particular childhood memory, behaviour, wish, or thought process. By contrast, reconstruction involves