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Knowing What Psychoanalysts Do and Doing What Psychoanalysts Know may well be the most important book in our field that readers will come across in many years. It may also prove to be one of the most informative, useful, and challenging books that they are likely to encounter. Over fifty years ago, at his London IPA Congress presentation, André Green1 attempted to address what was then felt to be a crisis in psychoanalysis. Today, looking around at the diminished place that psychoanalysis currently holds in our health care system and general culture, the conflicts within and between our organizations, and the nature and level of the disparities in practice and theory that exist, it is difficult not to conclude that the crisis still persists and may even have worsened.
Although it may prove rather unpopular to say so, I think that one important contribution to the crisis has been the failure of organized psychoanalysis to really identify, explore, and think and talk seriously about the differences that exist between various psychoanalytic theories, models and practices, and the many local, regional, and language group iterations of those theories, models, and practices. This book, written and edited by David Tuckett and his colleagues—based upon the findings and tentative conclusions of the ongoing Comparative Clinical Methods discussion group project initiated by the European Psychoanalytic Foundation (EPF)
(1975). The analyst, symbolization and absence in the analytic setting (on changes in analytic practice and analytic experience). In memory of D. W. Winnicott. Int. J. Psychoanal., 56: 1-22.
and supported by the IPA, FEPAL and NAPSAC—does not shy away from taking on this long overdue task.
In retrospect, Robert Wallerstein’s2 famous pronouncements that despite our theoretical differences we are unified in our clinical stance and application falls far short of the actual realities of even local and national, much less international, psychoanalytic practi