Foreword

We should not delude ourselves about the current success of a number of works on various aspects of psychoanalysis, different periods in its history and the movements which have left their mark. What a large proportion of the reading public is looking for is a whiff of scandal. The work of Claudine and Pierre Geissmann offers something quite different: it is the fruit of a tremendous amount of work, reading and classifying a great number of unpublished works, or works which are rarely consulted or referred to. The authors have no hesitation in telling us about the interpersonal conflicts which illustrated some of the relationships between the pioneers of this relatively new field. But they know full well that a simple reminder of everyday life in a new field of science does not enable one to reconstruct the history of that science, all the more so when its roots need to be laid bare by the methodical work of a true archaeologist.

Throughout this book, Claudine and Pierre Geissmann show that the application of psychoanalysis to children has always been a challenge for psychoanalysts. Witness the clashes which are still going on today in psychoanalytical construction and reconstruction. The prototypical model of mental functioning can be found in the paradigm of infantile neurosis, which, it must be admitted, is no longer a universal model because of the interest currently shown in psychoses and borderline states. Contempory child psychoanalysts have also shown the importance of a second paradigm: child autism.

We will therefore follow the authors as they discreetly enter the ‘parents room’, and rediscover in the nursery the ‘ghosts’ of those who are no longer with us, to use the classic metaphor of Selma Fraiberg.

From the onset of the Wednesday sessions held in Freud’s apartment in Vienna, the first disciples of this small circle amassed observations which could be classified as protopsychoanalysis of the child. It is difficult to know whether these observations were j