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The publication of a selection of Louis Zinkin's papers, some for the first time, five years after his death, is welcome and timely. We are indeed indebted to the three women editors who have brought this work to a successful conclusion. It was grief work for them, and for me also, reading this text and being given so much again from Louis, of the half finished and postponed dialogues that were so suddenly terminated by his unexpected death.
These papers, written since the time he joined me on the consultant staff at St George's Hospital Psychotherapy Department, deal with subjects that often figured in our growing friendship and in some cases saw the light of day in our weekly academic meetings, and contributed very much to the worth of that container.
Like the editors I want to discuss the first short paper concerning his Jewish identity, the crucible within which his self developed. Here, Louis reminds us that the concept of the vertical split can be so illuminating and may help us to consider just those parts of our own racial or religious identity that do not naturally and comfortably come together. This paper needs to be brought alongside his paper on ‘malignant mirroring’, one of my particular favourites, in which he demonstrates how a group can be a dangerous place for all concerned when a subject sees across the room more than he or she can assimilate, even with the support of others in the mirroring confrontation.
On the other hand such mirroring can be a gift, for example, in the dialogues between Louis and myself where I, a Christian, brought up psychoanalytically as a Kleinian, found a reverse mirror with him in our shared inquisitiveness across Freudian-Jungian, Christian-Jewish differences and in having both individual and group interests, in contrast to the majority in both our respective camps.
In continuing the dialogue with Louis and addressing you, the readership, from the standpoint of a friendly stranger, I want to use an appreciation of the synchr