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In his first novel, The Parts Left Out, Thomas H. Ogden uses third-person “omniscient” narration to draw out the personalities of the characters in the story and the decisive questions and motives informing their lives. He does this not only by highlighting their various activities, thoughts, and feelings, but also by instilling in the reader an inquiry into what is not there, to what is left out, missed or missing in how each character lives with him-/herself and with others. Existential realities not easily subject to volition and those painful historical predicaments not subject to satisfactory transformation form the backdrop of the narrative and create moments alive with the possibility of meaningful decision, if the characters choose to make a move.
This overview of The Parts Left Out can be seen simply as my interpretation, of course, but the novel's title would seem to serve as the author's opening sign or invocation, indicating one place psychoanalytically informed readers might begin their conversation with the fate of the text and its place in the body of Ogden's work. Before I say more about the novel itself, I would like to offer some psychoanalytic background and context for my reading of Ogden and his expansion of analytic awareness.
Recent work in object relations, Bionian thought, field theory, and intersubjectivity, along with more specifc expositions of reverie, awareness without memory or desire, nonverbal communication, and related experiences of relatively unencumbered, “unsaturated,” “creative” moments of “disclosure” and “emergence” suggest an openness in our literature to explore what might be meant by analytic awareness—beyond what is conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. Theoretically, when we acknowledge and carefully consider how and what it is we do not