You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
J.-B. Pontalis is well known to readers on this side of the Atlantic from his many publications, especially his well-regarded The Language of Psychoanalysis , coauthored with J. Laplanche, and from his many years as editor of La Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse. He may require little introduction, but nonetheless, we are provided with a very effective one in a fine translator's introduction to this book.
Windows does not lend itself very readily to review, just as it does not open itself to reading on conventional terms. We have here a series of brief and very personal essays or reflections, or what I would prefer to call musings. Each is but a page or two in length. There is no discernible sequencing or overall plan of organization of these musings; rather, they seem random or casual and unpremeditated. Each is centered on a particular topic, almost freely associative in character, and touching—at times directly and explicitly, at other times quite indirectly and diffusely—on matters of concern or relevance to psychoanalytic experience. The intent does not seem to be clinical or even theoretical, although occasionally, the author's attention turns to case material or to a particular patient. Rather, these little musings are more general