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.
Winner of the 2010 Gradiva Prize in the category of psychoanalytic theory, Joseph Fernando's The Processes of Defense announces itself as a ‘new synthesis’ - presumably of classical ego psychology and contemporary trauma theory. Rather than providing a synthesis (which I think is a long way off in our profession), this book elaborates an original, even unconventional framework for future theoretical research - as well as an inspiration for continuing the therapeutic struggle within the psychoanalytic frame. It is an unusually ambitious, systematic and rigorous contribution to clinical thought, elaborated with the support of detailed case studies. These connected narratives are skillfully interwoven with the unfolding conceptual argument, which gradually takes on the aspect of a large and complex structure of ideas.
Fernando ventures on a quest for what he calls a general theory, but his vision of this project is functional rather than dogmatic and treats what I would call the architecture of psychoanalytic concepts. In addition to introducing new terms, which he defines and illustrates very clearly, Fernando also re-imagines the kinds of relationship that theoretical concepts can have with each other and with clinical practice. In this sense, the parts of the theory are rather more modular than synthetic; they do not interlock seamlessly and there is more than one way to fit them together.
This way of doing theory has an inclusive and open-ended quality; like certain kinds of innovative public architecture, it escapes the usual kind of