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Volume 1 of Ralph Greenson's The Technique and Practice of Psychoanalysis has been translated into five languages and has sold over 60,000 copies. The many readers of that deservedly popular book who have longed to have Volume 2 can now fulfill that impulse, albeit in an aim-inhibited fashion. Greenson's son Daniel and his two collaborators have edited this volume as a memorial to Greenson. Published 25 years after Volume 1, this book includes four chapters (totaling 60 pages) written by Ralph Greenson himself and 18 chapters written by 19 other contributors.
In his preface, Daniel Greenson writes that his father struggled 14 years to complete Volume 1 and told him, “Papers are easy; they are for now. But books are for posterity.” Daniel adds that the book on technique by Fenichel—his father's second analyst—was considered the “mainstay of the literature” when Ralph was writing his. He also cites his father's comment that following in someone's footsteps is never easy.
In 1985, material for the planned Volume 2 was found among Greenson's papers. This material included an introduction, a detailed outline for the nine chapters he intended for that volume, and drafts of the four chapters by Greenson included in the present volume. The editors then asked colleagues to write chapters that follow Greenson's outline of topics. As the editors' introduction notes, additional chapters cover topics Greenson had not planned to address, and some are more theoretical and less clinical than is characteristic of Greenson's own writings. The end result is a book