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.
Steiner is of course widely known for his influential earlier publication Psychic Retreats (1993), a title which has received the implicit accolade of having become established as a term of general psychoanalytic currency. Therein he explored and elucidated how the basic defensive components - splitting, projective identification and introjection - could be combined to create complex narcissistic organisations, oblivious to reality and resistant to change. Whilst that volume could be seen as consolidating and giving detailed clinical application to the earlier work of Rosenfeld (1964, 1971), this current collection of papers breaks fresh ground in focusing more particularly on the difficulties besetting the attempts to leave such a psychic retreat. In doing so it confirms Steiner's reputation as one of the foremost analytic authors of his generation.
As the narcissistic organisation starts to crumble the patient is exposed to the dawning awareness of a reality that requires acknowledgement of separateness: the insulation of the psychic retreat within which self and object are often fused and confused, along with the idealisations and denigrations that typically accompany that, must be relinquished. This inevitably exposes the patient to the anxieties associated with receptive dependence: small wonder then that the most significant recurrent theme running through these papers is Steiner's increasing sensitivity to his patients' shame and humiliation, frequently masked by a power struggle within the analysis, which can accompany such an emergence.
This volume offers us a selection of Steiner's papers, principally from the last ten years, several of which have been previously published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. But this is no mere rehash: indeed I have no hesitation in paying this collection the ultimate compliment that its sum feels even greater than its parts. As my reference to ‘Steiner's increasing sensitivity’ implies these papers could be read