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Five of the first six chapters in this book were presentations at a conference that took place in London in April 2000 and are published essentially unmodified. These include three papers, by Edna O'Shaughnessy, Ronald Britton and Riccardo Steiner, and two discussions, by Michael Feldman and Hanna Segal. Following these, the editor, John Steiner, contributes a comprehensive review of Rosenfeld's major papers. As Steiner notes, all six authors knew Rosenfeld personally, and the first section of the book gives glimpses into Rosenfeld's character alongside his theoretical contributions.
The second part of the book consists of the republication of four of Rosenfeld's papers without commentary beyond Steiner's reflections on them in his chapter in Part One. The papers chosen span the years 1947-1971, stopping short of Rosenfeld's later work from 1978-1987. The decision is a deliberate one. As Steiner explains, in his later papers Rosenfeld revised much of his earlier thinking and, when faced with an impasse, put much greater emphasis on the analyst's contributions to the difficulties, including the analyst's projections into the patient.
While Steiner sees Rosenfeld's later focus on the analyst as a valid part of an analyst's approach, and has adapted some of it for his own concept of ‘analyst-centered interpretations’ (Steiner, 1994), he feels that Rosenfeld's later work lacks the subtlety and balance of his earlier papers, “when he could so wonderfully put himself in the patient's position without losing his analytic perspective” (p. 80). This view is shared by many contemporary British Kleinians. What the optimal balance is between attention to the patient's and the analyst's contributions is a debatable one, with opinions that vary not only from analyst to analyst and school to school, but from one analysis to another — or even one phase of analysis to another — within a given analyst's practice.
The first chapter by Edna O'Shaughnessy is a beautiful and detailed descri