You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This book was the fulfillment of André Green's desire: to fund and test a collaborative study of psychoanalytic treatment of borderline disorders.
In 2005, André Green initiated his ideas by criticizing Wallerstein's “illusion of common ground and mythical pluralism” (p. 628).
Then, Green boldly stated his belief: “The only valid procedure is to show … the exposition of a sequence of sessions and on a psychoanalytic process revealed at sufficient length can demonstrate the kinship between two different theories … based on different techniques and interpretations…. [T]his exercise has never been attempted” (italics original).
He got his wish, funded in large part by the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA), and at his insistence that the only valid psychoanalytic research (keeping in mind the greater ambiguity of recherché in French versus English) is done in the consulting room. He'd been explicit, rebuking Wallerstein and Stern for their published research as irrelevant to psychoanalysis (Green, personal communication, 2007).
The results of Green's efforts—meeting twice annually over 3 years with eight psychoanalysts of his choosing—were published in 2007 by the IPA press and were part of the International Psychoanalysis Library series, a prestigious imprint. Yet this book has been reviewed only twice (in English)—in the British Journal of Psychotherapy (Twyman, 2008) and the Journal of Analytic Psychology —and never by other major psychoanalytic journals of record.
Why have we psychoanalysts ignored what Green considered a major work, a fulfillment of Green's wish, one of the last books published before his death in 2012? This review begins to address this odd dilemma: The answers lie within the book itself. We will unfold fatal flaws within the making of this book, flaws revealed in the words of the authors.
The dramatis personae. Green insisted that there be two psychoanalysts, each based on geography and theory. Two from France, two from Europe, two from