Working Psychoanalytically with Nonneurotic Patients: Theory and Technique: Unrepresented States and the Construction of Meaning: Clinical and Theoretical Contributions. Edited by Howard B. Levine, Gail S. Reed, and Dominique Scarfone. London:  Karnac, 2013.  300 pp.

In this most cogent contribution addressed to the understanding of states of mind that fail to gain access to the chain of representation, symbolization, and verbal connections, the three editors have done a masterful job of bringing together clear, detailed descriptions of both theoretical developments and their clinical applications essential in dealing with a group of patients who until recently were not considered amenable to traditional psychoanalytic exploration.

What makes this book particularly valuable, especially for the American reader, is that psychoanalysis as practiced in this country has not had a well-formulated theoretical or clinical approach to the understanding of the mind in its more primitive and earlier areas of functioning. In the 1960s and before, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and Harold Searles were among the pioneers in this area. More recently, Thomas Ogden has contributed a large number of papers to the challenges confronting the seasoned analyst who has to devise new ways of listening in order to make sense of what is happening in the treatment of such patients.