Acknowledgements

Most of the papers included in this collection were written by their authors especially for this book. There are three exceptions: André Green’s ‘The intuition of the negative in Playing and Reality’, published in the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 1997, Vol. 78, Part 6, pp 1071–1084, and Thomas H. Ogden’s ‘Analysing forms of aliveness and deadness of the transference—countertransference’, published in The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 1995, Vol. 76, Part 4, pp. 695–709. Parts of Rosine Perelberg’s ‘The interplay of identifications: violence, hysteria and the repudiation of femininity’ have been published in The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 1999, Vol. 80, Part 1, pp. 31–45. I am grateful to David Tuckett, the editor of the Journal, for his kind permission to reproduce the papers here. I am indebted to Elizabeth Bott Spillius, for her prompt and enthusiastic response to the suggestion for the book. Peter Shaio has been, as usual, very efficient and highly competent in helping me with the original editing of the manuscript. Linda Mason’s secretarial skills were an invaluable help. Special thanks to Jill Duncan, Assistant Librarian, The Institute of Psycho-Analysis.

I discovered André Green’s writings for the first time in 1969, as a student, just before qualifying as a clinical psychologist. I have followed the development of his ideas since then. I met André Green for the first time in 1993, in Australia, on the occasion of the third international conference hosted by the Brisbane Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, on Psychoanalysis, Madness and the Theatre. Green opened the conference with an inaugural lecture on Psychoanalysis and Culture, and presented one of the main papers, ‘Scenes of tragic madness in Ancient Greece’. It was a memorable occasion, both personal and professional. André Green showed great magnanimity in helping my wife, Valli, and me, to establish a psychoanalytic oasis in Queensland.

Editing this book has been ha