You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
André Green's work is known to Englishspeaking readers of psychoanalysis mainly through his book On Private Madness (1986, reviewed IJPA., 69: 562-3). There is a steady stream of references throughout that work to British psychoanalysts. French psychoanalysis is often seen as inaccessible from the outside and Green, as a French analyst who has felt a particular affinity for certain aspects of British psychoanalysis, offers us an unusual opportunity. He is a prolific contributor to the psychoanalytic literature, with many areas of interest. In this review I shall comment, in the most summary fashion, on some of his work that is not yet translated into English. It is not intended as a critical account but simply as a descriptive introduction to these ideas.
Two books give a valuable overview of Green's work. Un psychanalyste engagé: conversations avec Manuel Macias is distilled from a series of interviews. It is edited by the interviewer with his own contributions removed, so that what emerges amounts to an autobiography, largely devoted to Green's intellectual and professional life but including personal material as well. De l'affect à la pensée: introduction à l'oeuvre d'André Green is by John Jackson, professor of French Literature at Bern University. In Un psychanalyste engagé (pp. 93-4) Green comments with gratitude on Jackson's book, noting his position as someone outside the profession of analysis but thoroughly familiar with it. Jackson groups Green's work under four headings: language, affect, the question of the subject and the work of the negative, and his relation to British psychoanalysis.
The last of these is evident throughout Green's writings. In Chapter five of Un psychanalyste engagé he describes his first encounter with British analysts, in informal meetings in London before the Edinburgh International Congress of 1961, where Winnicott made a powerful personal impression on him. It was Winnicott's sense of freedom, his independence, that so impressed