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This book, which is engrossing and wonderfully rewarding, is very difficult to review. Its theme and title, given above, describes almost all good scholarship in the field. Certainly it describes much of the work of Roy Schafer, who is profoundly cosmopolitan not only across schools of thought but also across eras of thought. But it does not offer a clear and orienting line through the work. Nor are we helped much by the division of the book into three parts: Changing Directions; Further Clinical Explorations; and Authority, Morality, Conformity.
Rather I recommend the book for an ambling perusal of a variety of topics in the company of an individual of great learning, serious thought, and considerable personal charm. There is direction to the walk, but that's not what it's all about.
In this spirit I mention some of the sites along the way, not necessarily in the order they were visited. One of my favorites is a small jewel buried deep in Part II, a subchapter of “An Analyst's Notebook,” called “Betty Joseph Live.” In 1992 she did a brief series of clinical case discussions at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research in New York. With Hanna Segal she was regarded as a leading force in the London Kleinian school. Schafer describes his excitement and joy in “reviving the experience of being a student listening to a superb teacher,” a statement that tells us something important about him, as well as about her. He highlights the increasing congruence between her modern Kleinian outlook, and modem ego analysis. He goes on to describe the Kleinians' restorative attentiveness to “the various forms and degrees of destructiveness that are all mixed up with erotized transferences as well as sadomasochistic manipulations.” I am reminded by contrast of some distressing case presentations, wherein imprecision in regard to forms and degrees of destructiveness was producing unlovely situations.
“Conversations With Elisabeth von R.” is a virtuoso piece that examines Fre