Letter to the Editor

To the Editor:

Recently, our book Body as Psychoanalytic Object: Clinical Applications from Winnicott to Bion and Beyond (Routledge, ) was reviewed by Michael Robbins (IJP, 103(6): 1133–1136). This review contains certain errors which we would like to correct. We feel some of his assertions were based on a broad misunderstanding of the focus of the book and we would like to clarify this.

Robbins asserts in several places his view that the book focuses on a particular type of patient “whose language does not express reflective thought but is dissociated from their basic experience and expression, which is somatic, affective and behavioral” (1133). He asserts again, “I return to this issue in my conclusion as it is at the core of working with unintegrated, dissociated persons, and is the focus of this book” (1133), and comments on Ricard and Jarreau’s chapter, “However, the chapter seemed unrelated to the general thesis of the book about working with dissociated individuals” (1134). He also states that most of the patients described are psychotic: “The undifferentiated, unintegrated, non-reflective somatic-behavioral mode that characterizes most of the patients described in the book is compatible with my understanding of psychosis” (1133). Alongside his homogeneous view of the patients described he also thinks the interventions in the book are homogeneous: “Most of the vignettes are about how the authors attempt with more or less success to meet the patient in mirror-like resonance at their functioning somatic-affective level and thereby establish an ‘I am with you’ sense of caring” (1136).

We feel Robbins’ understanding that the focus of the book is on a particular type of patient is not a legitimate reading of the book; it is a particularly odd reading in light of the fact that, as indicated in the book’s title, and as expressed in the Introduction and the thirteen diverse and separately authored chapters, the focus of the book is not on a particular type of patient bu