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The editor of this book, Gregorio Kohon, in his Prefactory Remarks, explains what is intended by the title of the book. “The British School of Psychoanalysis comprises all the psychoanalysts belonging to the British Psycho-Analytical Society. Within this Society there are three groups, each with its own characteristics: the Kleinian group; the “B” group (followers of Anna Freud); and the Independent Group …. The Independent British analysts created and developed the theory of object relations …. The term ‘object relations’ designates the subject's mode of relation to his world …. It implies a way of relating that is considered as an interrelationship: the individual affects his objects as much as his objects affect him …. Ferenczi's concept of ‘early maternal deprivation’ … [was] the theoretical background that allowed the ideas of Melanie Klein, Michael Balint, Ronald Fairbairn, Donald Winnicott, and others to develop” (pp. 19-21).
The Independent Group clearly contains some of the most prominent, contributory members of the British School of Psychoanalysis, and this selection of their writings presents an excellent overview of their formulations. The volume contains a collection of some 22 papers written by 20 contributors, all valuable additions to psychoanalytic literature. The papers are grouped under five headings: an introduction with a paper on countertransference, early environment, success and failure, with excellent papers on early ego development, the psychoanalytic encounter, transference and countertransference, regression and the psychoanalytic situation, and that ancient difficulty undergoing continuing scrutiny, female sexuality.
To review the content of these papers is clearly too large an undertaking for a book review. It is, however, possible to declare that all the papers are eminently readable and rewarding, exquisitely clinical, and full of useful practical applications. They are written with the elegance and graceful fluidity of the educated Br