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This is a book of more than three hundred pages, twelve chapters, over a hundred sub-sections; and thirty-four pages of bibliography and thirty-three pages of index. It attempts a catalogue, synthesis, and exegesis of the work of the Independent Group of the British Psycho-Analytical Society, placing it in a historical and philosophical perspective. This is attempted within a structure of somewhat transcendental chapter headings (Emotion, Object and Person; Abstraction and Symbolisation; Creativity and Dreams; etc.) difficult to realise. The adopted method is a combination of essay, précis, and anthology of quotations; and it does become, too often, like struggling through a sentence with too many subordinate clauses.
Readers will look to this book to examine a coherent philosophy for the Independent group of psychoanalysts in Britain. Perhaps it is not enough simply to be psychoanalysts who abjure the other two groups. The characteristic identifying features are, of course, the stigmata of pedigree, genealogy; but it is useful to clarify what the family features are, as well as who was the mother or the uncle. In trying to do this, there are at least three agendas: firstly, to convey the universality of influences (and this comes near to writing a critical history of psychoanalysis); secondly, (and paradoxically) to define a characteristic and recognisable unifying voice; and, thirdly to make a thorough reconnaissance of the uncharted frontier with the Klein group. Independence seems intended to mean being open to influence from everywhere, free of dynastic chauvinism and group blindness; but, if we are looking for family features, it inevitably involves lineage and analytic family, just as it always has done in every analytic school. I felt that a prime factor in the rambling character of the book is some unacknowledged muddle over this. There is a magisterial sweep; but the over-inclusiveness, the cascade of names, quotations, and summaries is difficult, even wher