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.
The question of the relationship between life experiences and understanding of the field of work is an interesting one. Psychoanalysis in particular recognises the importance of understanding the personal past and collective memory as factors closely related to current pursuits. Unfortunately, while this is the implicit theme of the present volume, the book fails to inform the reader regarding the relationship of biography to life-work. The author, an independently educated psychoanalyst from southern California, initially educated as a social worker specialising in family and group practice, elicited interviews from eleven analysts in the United States and England. In the process of conducting these interviews, she also provided a very brief vignette, including a dream, from a case of a ‘borderline’ woman patient from which she elicited comments in the form of a ‘supervisory’ conference. The analysts chosen for this report include André Green, Hanna Segal, Frances Tustin, John Bowlby, Ernest Wolf, Peter Giovacchini, Arnold Goldberg, Rudolf Ekstein, Robert Wallerstein, Arnold Modell and Jacob Arlow. In each instance, Hunter recorded a free-wheeling interview which, together, comprise much of the book (the interviews of André Green, Hanna Segal, Frances Tustin, and John Bowlby and Ernest Wolf have all been previously published in the journal of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis).