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This is an internationally important book. Like many of the best psychoanalytic books it strikes a cord of recognition when reading it – an experience of half-known pieces falling into place. The book contains a very good insight and is a pleasure to read.
First, to introduce the book. It is composed of Elise’s papers, written over 25 years. The author is an authority on her subject, and a depth of clinical experience and knowledge of the relevant literature are drawn on. Adrienne Harris, who writes the Foreword, contextualizes the work. She comments that one can see the influence of Kristeva, and goes on:
This collection of papers … reflects a unique career and trajectory, touching on the movements of liberation and social change that defined the late 20th century, and staying in very deep theoretical waters: feminist psychoanalytic and cultural texts, object relations theory, analytic field theory, the particular contemporary West Coast psychoanalytic scene: Ogden, Spezzano, Gerson and others … . The Winnicott who emerges is so richly present … (xiv)
The title of the book refers to the “analytic field” and the book is published in the Routledge Relational Perspectives Book Series. In a note on the back cover, Giuseppe Civitarese comments:
Page 1063Not only does the author deal with one of the most intriguing and conflicted psychoanalytic issues – eros and libidinal life – she inserts it within the frame of the analytic field, itself a challenging theoretical perspective and new paradigm in psychoanalysis.
The core idea is the maternal erotic – the mother and baby’s erotic relationship – erotism in the analytic relationship. André Green and others have pointed out that there has been a loss of sight of the significance of sexuality. Possibly our view of the mother has always been somewhat de-sexualized – Elise thinks this to be the case. She comments, rightly I think, that we tend to be more comfortable with the patient’s aggression than with their erotism – and, as analys