Introduction to the case of Yune

It is a great pleasure for me to introduce this time the Analyst at Work section of the IJP. Once more, it delivers a presentation of detailed clinical material on the analysis of an adult patient, this time round carried out by a Korean psychoanalyst and discussed by renowned colleagues from Switzerland and Australia.

The case is very well presented and offers ample background information which turns out to be of some importance for the reader considering the context of the case. This last fact should be taken into account given that it goes to the heart of this clinical debate: the reader will find here clinical material from analysis which takes place in Korea, but is commented on by two analysts who come from the European tradition of psychoanalytic training.

We must here emphasise how much is added to the clinical debate by having the possibility to take into account the context in which each psychoanalytical process takes place. The culture, the history, the interplay between these two last factors, and the singularity of the meeting between analyst and patient is something that comes through when we read the three texts.

These days, it is simply not possible to understand an analysis centring only in what happens to a patient or an analyst, nor solely in the relationship between transference and countertransference at the heart of the analytic dyad, as was suggested by the Barangers with their concept of the analytic field.

Psychoanalysis has developed in recent years, taking on board the idea that it is imperative to take the context into account and that this, changing as it does from one era to another and from place to place, has an important impact on the very practice of psychoanalysis.

But there is another detail which makes this presentation special: we are looking here at material submitted by an analyst who is exercising their practice in a region which we could consider younger in relation to the development of psychoanalysis, and who also forms part of