General Introduction

Until recently Betty Joseph's work, which represents a particular development within the Kleinian tradition, has been little known outside a comparatively narrow circle of British psychoanalysts and Kleinian psychoanalysts abroad. It is the purpose of this book to collect her various papers together so as to make her seminal ideas more readily accessible. The aim of this General Introduction is to outline the main themes of her work. The papers themselves are divided into four sections, each of which has an introduction of its own which links the particular papers of the section with the main themes described in the General Introduction. The papers are reprinted in the order in which they were written, which sometimes differs from the order in which they were published.

Joseph's psychoanalytic technique and her way of conceptualizing the processes involved have evolved over many years, particularly in relation to the intensive and prolonged analysis of a number of difficult and resistant patients. These patients confronted her with subtle technical problems which have become a major interest of hers and which she addresses in the papers collected in this book. Although the patients with whom she was working could be classified as narcissistic, borderline, or perverse, the technical and theoretical issues with which Joseph has been concerned are of very wide application within psychoanalysis.

The type of patient with whom Joseph is particularly concerned in these papers is the sort of person who comes to analysis because consciously he (or she) wants to change, but who appears to be unwilling or unable to do so, even though his feeling about analysis and his analyst is usually basically positive. Joseph sees patients in a rigorously maintained

psychoanalytic setting in which patients are seen five times a week and are expected to use the couch, except of course in the case of child patients. Within the framework of this setting she attempts to provide a precise workin