Editors' Introduction

“A group of colleagues has started a highly promising method of investigation,” wrote Ernst Kris in the late forties (Kris, 1951). “Long after graduation from supervised work, they continue to regularly consult with several others on some of their cases over periods of years in order to make comparisons of the analytic ‘style’ among the consultants” (p. 26).

Kris was quick to grasp the value of this method for the investigation of the impact of ego psychology on psychoanalytic technique — an impact that was widely acknowledged at that time but little documented.

“The idea of small teams working over a number of years (with or without institutional backing) seems rapidly to be gaining ground among analysts. The comparison of technique … might well be ideally suited to stimulate teamwork, which, if adequately recorded, might prove to be of considerable documentary value” (1951, p. 26).

Not long thereafter, when contemplating the manifold but poorly documented technical changes induced by the growing familiarity with childhood development, psychoses, and borderline cases, Kris again issued the call for the formation of “a percipient, historically minded, but clinically versed and interested group of colleagues …” (Kris, 1956, p. 446).

Thus, when a group of students and recent graduates of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute approached Kris and requested his leadership of their own local group, this was not an offer that Kris was likely to refuse. His leadership of this group was so exciting and effective that, by 1956, the Board Room of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, with its large oval table, was packed with circumferential rows of eager participants. Since Kris, as is clear from the above quotes, believed that the raison d'etre for such groups was the active participation and sharing of clinical material by all members, he had adamantly refused to move to larger quarters. The compromise was the formation of smaller topical subgroups, initially under the leaders