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In her combined study of two articles - one, published in English in 1967, which has become a seminal work, and the other, which is now being published in English -the author highlights fundamental features of the dialectical thinking of José Bleger and his deep-seated capacity to anticipate problems in psychoanalysis.
Is it possible to be both a creative and a rigorous researcher in psychoanalysis?
The aim of this introduction to the belated English publication of ‘Theory and Practice in Psychoanalysis’ is to arouse interest in the thinking of José Bleger and, by bringing readers face to face with his writings, enable them to respond personally to what they say.
My own answer to the question that opens this article is strongly affirmative. Bleger was the living example of an at once creative and rigorous researcher.
For more than 40 years, the vagaries of translation prevented the English-speaking world (and many gifted thinkers) from discovering the thinking of José Bleger, contained mainly in his book Symbiosis and Ambiguity (Bleger, 1967b). This situation is now changing: the book, translated only into French in 1981, is shortly to be published in an English translation.1 This has created a significant time lag, both for the reader and for Bleger's texts themselves. Aside from the article (published in Spanish in 1969) that is now presented in this issue, there is another essential text by this author that The International Journal of Psychoanalysis fortunately published at the same time as the original in Spanish. I am referring to ‘Psychoanalysis of the psychoanalytic frame’ (Bleger, 1967a).
In that article, José Bleger was anticipating problems that had not yet been addressed in the international literature. The coupling of that article, which has become a seminal work, with a belated reading of the present text on research in psychoanalysis offers me an opportunity to help to make known a body of work that will long provide us with much new food for thought.
Blege