An Introduction to the Work of André Green

“The function of representation appeared to me progressively as the referent of analytic work. Whatever factors oblige us to modify the analytic setting, in the final analysis the essence of analytic action concerns the representation of intrasubjective and intersubjective psychic processes. The rest belongs to a process of reorganisation in the patient in which the analyst plays no part. I would even suggest that the modifications of the setting have no other function than to facilitate the function of representation”.

André Green is the author of a considerable oeuvre in which he re-thinks Freudian theory, giving it fresh impetus in spaces that Freud had left fallow. His theorizing approach, which is both demanding and rigorous, is a reflection of complex thinking (Morin, 2005)2 at work, open towards the inside and the outside. This openness is borne out by his debates both with Freud's own thought and that of psychoanalysts of different generations and different currents since Freud, his contributions to the psychoanalytic approach to cultural works (theatre, literature, painting) - a genre he gives new life to - as well as his exchanges with anthropologists, biologists and mathematicians. This theorizing approach takes place within the epistemological framework of the history-structure dialectic and of the turning-point of 1920 (second topography and the death drive). During the course of this journey he has advanced original approaches to narcissism, the drive, the negative, representation, thinking, memory, time, and the analytic setting and process. One of the central themes of this development is the concept de limite or border concept (Green, 1990, p. 103-40, 293-316; Green, 1986, p. 60-83), with its refraction on clinical practice, conferring, as early as 1974, in his London Report (Green, 1986, p. 30-59), a metapsychological status to borderline states [états limites]. This Report, which marked a milestone, constituted the