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This generous volume offers three gifts: diverse, interesting papers representing the evolution of Freud’s work as understood by one of the major groups in British psychoanalysis, a wonderful introduction that is itself a master class, and an invitation to consider both what unifies Contemporary Freudians while also setting them apart within British psychoanalysis, as well as
what this might help us understand about contemporary Freudians elsewhere in our broader psychoanalytic community. The book includes a mix of theoretically elucidating papers and fascinating clinical material, which combine to flesh out a way of thinking and working rooted in core longstanding Freudian ideas and fertilized by contributions from other groups within the British Society. The collection shows that the thinking of British Contemporary Freudians, having evolved in relation to both Freudian tradition and ideas shaping its recent and current neighbourhood, is characterized by both depth and an either/or-defying breadth. What comes through is substance and aliveness.
In the masterful introduction, editors Ken Robinson and Joan Schacter tell the story of evolution and diversity within the British Contemporary Freudian group, with its roots in Freud and in Anna Freud’s extensions and developmentally anchored work at the Hampstead Clinic, which was a centre of Freudian thought after the Freuds’ emigration from Vienna. Some British Contemporary Freudian analysts are based in Anna Freud’s extensions of Freud, some are more rooted in cross-fertilization with the work of analysts from other groups within the British society, such as Winnicott and Klein, while others utilize a kind of direct return to Freud synthetic with the work of French psychoanalysts, or are focused on ideas shared with Italian psychoanalysts writing about the body.
To capture this diversity, the editors offer the Wittgensteinian concept of “family resemblance”. The idea of “family resemblance” is flexible and elastic, al