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The two questions on the back cover of the book provide a succinct reflection of the aim of this book: What are the main features of contemporary psychoanalysis? What do the different schools of psychoanalysis have in common?
In the introduction the authors state that psychoanalysis is in crisis: struggling to differentiate itself from psychoanalytic psychotherapy and ‘its other offspring’, seeking new forms of leadership, being threatened by economic recession, diversifying and coming under increasing scrutiny from all directions. Hence the book's focus on contemporary psychoanalytic theory and an attempt to find unity and common ground within the movement. In order to place the contemporary issues in context, a brief history of psychoanalysis is offered, with a ‘family tree of psychoanalysis’: who analysed whom. I found this intriguing and I wish I had seen it much earlier on in my training.
The authors aim to present the similarities and differences between the various schools of psychoanalytic thought, believing that clinical theory can be unified in a meaningful way despite theoretical divergence. They argue that clinicians need to have a particular analytic perspective from which to work but that they should be able to draw on a range of different ideas and techniques. This appealed to me, perhaps because of the nature of my training (at the British Association of Psychotherapists), but I wondered whether the book would be able to rise to such a challenge.
The work is in the tradition of the ‘critical dictionary’ (; ) in that it aims to clarify and question in order to extract what is valuable from each psychoanalytic viewpoint. As a trainee about to embark on the final stages of training, I was curious to find out if it would be rich enough to satisfy my needs at this point, and yet not be so complex that I could derive benefit from it only years after qualifying.
The book is organized into two sections. The first deals with contemporary psychoanalytic theory,