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This book is an introduction to Green's entire body of works understood in its contemporary, and particularly British, theoretical underpinnings. Prepared by Litza Guttierrez-Green, it brings together publications ranging from 1986 to 2011. The cover shows the detail of a picture by Poliakov that appeared opposite the couch in Green's office. Fernando Urribarri's preface gives an overview of the principal stages of Green's theoretical trajectory. At the end of the book, the bibliography is followed by an index of names and an index of concepts.
Green sets out the standpoints of another contemporary analyst he considers important before describing the points of agreement and disagreement and developing his own conception in a way that is supplemented from one chapter to the next. As he writes in relation to Bion, it is a matter of using others' ideas while remaining faithful to your own thought. They are always evaluated with regard to clinical experience and with reference to Freud's texts. The critical reading of these authors allows a deeper reinterpretation of Freud and a linkage of knowledge that also respects the contextual differences. This perspective guides him, for example, in according increasing importance to the theory of representation. This forms the basis for comparing the various conceptions.
The first chapter, on Bion, the primordial psyche and the work of the negative (originally published in ), describes the sources and conditions of thinking. While early Bion (1970) has a scientific quest and becomes disillusioned by it, a later, less easily accessible Bion (1990 [1975-79]) draws on fiction, even science fiction and art, to explore the psyche beyond what is visible and thinkable, the unknowability of the ‘thing in itself’. Seeking the origin of psychic life, he describes the primordial mind, or the ‘beta elements’ of thoughts without a thinker. Sensory experience (therefore external stimuli) and emotional experience (emotion as activation of the dr