Under the aegis of the Psychoanalytic Research and Development Fund, Martin Bergmann organized a conference with the title of “The Hartmann Era,” and invited nine other senior analysts to prepare contributions as responses to his precirculated introductory review paper, “The Hartmann Era and Its Contribution to Psychoanalytic Technique.” All the papers were then discussed among the conferees, and were published in 2000 as the subject book.

In addition to Bergmann, the invited authors who presented papers included Jacob Arlow, Harold Blum, André Green, William Grossman, Otto Kernberg, Anton Kris, Peter Neubauer, Albert Solnit, and Clifford Yorke. Two officers of the fund, Mortimer Ostow and Sidney Furst, made comments as well.

The most general conclusion, supported more or less by all, was that Hartmann had made a number of significant contributions, some of which have essentially been found useful, others not, and others still—in the opinion of a majority of contributors, at least—