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In a previous book, The elusive human subject: A psychoanalytical theory of subject relations, Roger Kennedy proposed a reconceptualisation of subjectivity in psychoanalysis. In this new work he builds on that foundation. In the introduction to Psychoanalysis, history and subjectivity he brings the three themes of his title together:
The past in the clinical encounter can be seen as that which is re-enactable between analyst and patient. I have chosen to organize my own story about history in terms of a particular plot, that of differing models of human subjectivity (p. 4).
The dissonance here between ‘plot’ and ‘models of human subjectivity’ promises a tension between the specific and the abstract that must somehow be resolved if the story is to be held together.
In the third chapter, ‘A history of the closure threat to the Cassel Hospital’, Kennedy shows us one way that balance can be achieved. Relating his firsthand experience of the crisis at the Cassel, he succeeds in presenting the wider picture in both historical and psychological terms. Conscious of the ramifications, Kennedy even goes so far as to describe the events as ‘a kind of