Introduction

In 1997, André Green was 70 years old. The idea for the present volume emerged then from a wish to celebrate, in the Anglo-Saxon world, Green’s many and varied contributions to psychoanalyis. Green’s published psychoanalytic work started with a short paper on ‘L’oeuvre de Maurice Bouvet’ (Green, 1960). Two years later, Green published ‘L’inconscient freudien et la psychoanalyse française contemporaine’ (Green, 1962). This paper had been delivered as part of a critical exchange with Laplanche and Leclaire, at the Bonneval Colloquium organised by Henry Ey in 1960, on L’Inconscient (Ey, 1966)—where Green also presented a major paper (1966). In that article, Green questioned the validity of the Lacanian formula that the unconscious is structured like a language; he criticised Laplanche and Leclaire for leaving aside some important aspects of the Freudian Vorstellungs-Repräsentanz, and for their ignoring the question of affects in their contribution to the Colloquium. Green argued for the need to give priority to the drives in psychoanalysis, and, notably, for the consideration of the subject’s conflict between positivity and negativity. He would develop many of these themes later in his work. Towards the end of the paper, he declared that his criticisms did not necessarily separate him from Laplanche and Leclaire; it was more an invitation for a dialogue.

It is this kind of dialogue, with a critical, formidable interlocutor like Green, that the English-speaking reader has been deprived of for many years. Green has written fourteen books and around two hundred articles. He has been translated into many languages, but only two books have been published in English: The Tragic Effect (1979), and the collection of papers gathered under the title On Private Madness (1986). (In fact, Le Discours vivant —Laconception psychanalytique de l’affect (1973) will appear in the New Library collection—twenty-six years after its original publication!)

Green’s paper on ‘The dead mother’, wh