Idées directrices pour une psychanalyse contemporaine: Méconaisssance et reconnaissance de l'inconscient [Key ideas for a contemporary psychoanalysis: Misrecognition and recognition of the unconscious] By André Green Paris:  Presses Universitaires de France. 2002.  400 pp.

This book may be viewed as Green's equivalent to An outline of psycho-analysis (Freud, 1938). Just as the latter is a masterful review of the psychoanalytic enterprise that Freud created, so the former is a journey through Green's work. The book is impossible to summarise, as it contains the outline of all Green's most important ideas. In reviewing it, I found it necessary to refer to several of Green's other books, as these provide a network where themes and ideas intersect, each time acquiring a wider dimension. However, the book also contains new reflections from Green's masterful and scholarly dialogue with philosophers, scientists and anthropologists over 50 years. Gems of thinking—such as the link between the pleasure of life and the return of the repressed (p. 239), or the phenomenon of irradiation (retroactive reverberation-anticipatory annunciation) in the analytic listening (p. 276) permeate the book, inviting one to think further. If one is seeking an overall view of Green's thinking, this is the book to consult.

In this review, I refer to a few selected themes and do not necessarily follow the sequence of chapters.

For Green, the therapeutic encounter takes place over many layers. The patient tells a story: of his origins, of his family or parents. The analyst is silent, paying receptive, suspended attention, facing the patient's free associations. In the current situation,