Acknowledgements

I want to express my gratitude to my wife for both her participation and her support in the making of this book. I am deeply indebted to my psychoanalytic teachers, particularly Betty Joseph, Hanna Segal, Ruth Malcolm and the late Herbert Rosenfeld; also to my colleagues in the Betty Joseph Workshop for hours of clinical discussion, notably Michael Feldman and John Steiner, with whom I share the West Lodge Conferences. I am grateful to overseas colleagues, particularly the members of my postgraduate seminar in Frankfurt, Germany, for enthusiastic shared explorations. I owe a double debt to Elizabeth Spillius as a colleague and ever supportive editor. A number of literary scholars have informed and inspired me, particularly at the Grasmere Conferences, especially my friends Robert and Pamela Woof, Jonathan Wordsworth, Thomas McFarland and DuncanWu.

I want to thank the Melanie Klein Trust for permission to use material from The Writings of Melanie Klein, The Oedipus Complex Today and a footnote from the Envy & Gratitude typescript; the Wordsworth Trust for permitting me to quote from the I.F. Manuscript; Karnac Books for permission to use The Missing Link: Parental Sexuality in the Oedipus Complex from The Oedipus Complex Today (ed. J.Steiner); the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis for material from R.Britton and J.Steiner, ‘Interpretation: selected fact or overvalued idea?’, and R.Britton, ‘Psychic reality and unconscious belief’, ‘Psychic reality and unconscious belief: a reply to Harold B.Gerard’ and ‘Publication anxiety: conflict between communication and affiliation’. Psychoanalytic Inquiry gave me permission to use ‘The blindness of the seeing eye: inverse symmetry as a defence against reality’ (vol. 4, ) and Yale University Press gave me permission to use ‘Reality and unreality in phantasy and fiction’ from On Freud’s ‘Creative Writers and Day-dreaming’ (ed. E.S.Person et al., 1995). W.W.Norton & Co. gave permission for the use of material from W.Wordswor