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 publishes the papers, principally by André Green and Daniel Stern, with other interventions which were given at a day conference on Psychoanalysis and Infant Observation in 1997. These are preceded by an introduction by Riccardo Steiner and an earlier exchange between André Green and Robert Wallerstein on psychoanalytic research.
I was present at this conference, and recall feeling how unreasonably hostile was the treatment meted out to Daniel Stern by André Green, and, in collusion with him at least, by some other participants. Stern was accused of being allied to the enemies of psychoanalysis. He said that he did not at all want to destroy psychoanalysis. ‘I feel that by contributing to a discourse that conceivably has indirect relevance, psychoanalysis will stay much healthier.’
A considerable extraneous burden of controversy overshadowed this debate. In the background lay a fierce argument about the role of ‘research’ in psychoanalysis, a strongly contested cause which has become something of a band-wagon in the IPA and in the British Psychoanalytical Society. Green and Stern became positioned as spokespersons respectively for the ‘non-scientific’ essence of psychoanalysis and for scientism, descriptions which in reality fit neither of them very well. There were also echoes in the debate of an earlier public debate on Stern's work in London, including a memorable exchange in which the apparently sunny natures of the Geneva babies he studies in his laboratories were compared with the more fractious Kleinian infants observed in London. In this book there is thus too much position taking, and too little receptive response (with some exceptions, such as Anne Alvarez's generous-spirited contribution) to what was actually said. The adversarial format of debate did not prove conducive to reflection.
To my mind, the only new work presented at the conference was that reported by Daniel Stern. One is inclined therefore to read the debate as a manifestation of how a