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Victoria Hamilton has succeeded not only in writing an extremely compelling book, but also in establishing a research project which will certainly have a significant influence on how analytic issues are conceptualized, articulated, and subjected to rigorous exploration. The ‘Analyst’ in the title refers to 65 analysts selected from Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and London. They tend to fall into five groups: developmental Freudian, classical Freudian, Kleinian, independent, and self-psychological. Each analyst submitted to a very extensive and far-reaching interview and orientation questionnaire, the results of which generated the material for this book. The topics covered were extremely powerful in their implications and comprehensiveness, including such issues as psychic reality, transference, dream interpretation, and models of change - the very basic stuff of each and every analytic hour. The ‘preconscious’ in the title refers to the mind of the analyst as he or she reflects upon the salient topics in analytic work and thought, formulating what emerges to be their own and their professional group's particular framework.
Initially, as I delved into the material of the book, I felt a pang of annoyance that no Jungian analyst was included in this survey of what analysts think and believe. However, as I went on with it, I actually felt a relief not to have Jungians in a survey which has for its agenda the revelation of clusters of thought and trend in orientation. Dr Hamilton very interestingly links these clusters to such dynamics as geographic location, the genealogies of the analysts and current influences. However, as the data is grouped, what does one actually learn? Are there really trends in identifiable orientations, or are these ‘statistical’ differences an open field for the eruption of something from the unconscious to be projected as a ‘group phenomenon’? This is something I believe we in the Jungian community need less of right now. Seeing ourselv