You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This book has been well reviewed in several publications, but deserves special mention in our journal because of its potential importance to child psychotherapists. Most of us have been trained as “classical Freudians” or “Kleinians” and, Winnicott apart, our knowledge of the Independent Group comes mainly from our own reading and discussion, or from further training.
Here for the first time is a book which shows the variety and spontaneity of thinking which can occur in the Independent Group. At the same time the underlying assumptions of independent analysts emerge in a way which allows the reader to integrate them constructively as he comes upon them from different points of view.
Kohon's introduction, in which he sets out the history of the psychoanalytic movement in Great Britain, is masterly: clear, thoughtful and non-polemical (in contrast to the somewhat grumpy tone of Martin James' paper on “Premature Ego Development”). This introduction could be particularly helpful to those puzzled students who enquire “What is the A, the B, the Middle Group?”
There follow some twenty papers by independent analysts, the majority dating from 1975 on, but going back as far as 1958 with Rycroft's classic “Enquiry into the Function of Words in the Psychoanalytical Situation”. There are four sections: on early environment; on the psychoanalytic encounter; on regression and the psychoanalytic situation; on female sexuality.
The section headings indicate the main areas in which independent analysts have made their major contributions. But each section provides much more than indicated by the heading. The section on “Early Environment” for instance, contains Khan's paper on “The Concept of Cumulative Trauma” and Winnicott's on “Fear of Breakdown”. But it also contains Padel's “Ego in Current Thinking” which will surely become a classic. Padel gives a scholarly critique of psychoanalytic thinking on the ego and the self, and an illuminating discussion on the nature and role of identi