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Over twenty years ago, Mara Sidoli and Gustav Bovensiepen initiated a tradition of annual weekend international child psychotherapy workshops in which Jungian analysts from different European countries met together to discuss clinical cases. The present book originates in a just such a workshop held at Abingworth Hall in 2002. Ten analysts with very different theoretical and clinical approaches, participated in a small group dedicated to the discussion of the case of a little girl of seven and a half called Maria, presented by Pier Claudio Devescovi. In the past, The discussion of the clinical case had always ended with the conclusion of the workshop, but in this case, the participants decided to continue to reflect on the case and on their discussion and to elaborate these reflections in writing. The result is Maria and the therapist. The book consists of a preface by Giuseppe Maffei, an ‘Introduction’ by Marie-Laure Grivet and 10 articles: ‘The case of Maria’ by Claudio Devescovi; ‘Repetition and right timing’ by Marisa d'Arrigo; ‘The shared secret’ by Daniela Testa; ‘The dead child in the mother’ by Suzanne Krakowiak; ‘Empathy and technique’ by Gianni Nagliero; ‘Figurability and seduction’ by Brigitte Allain-Dupré; ‘Language and the project of the self’ by Caterina Vezzoli; ‘The clamour of sex’ by Bernadette Vandenbroucke; ‘Paradise re-found and lost’ by Florence Wasmuth.
While the individual articles are undoubtedly interesting and worth reading, what I found particularly original and stimulating in this book are the articles in their entirety, for it is by looking at them as a whole that it becomes possible to begin to trace out the very particular way in which the participants have approached theory and-clinical practice. The authors make use of a very wide spectrum of analytical thought and cognitive and neuro-scientific research, passing from Cesar and Sarà Botella and René Thom to Daniel Stern, from Lebovici to Donald Meltzer, from De Mijolla to Winnicott, f