Invasive objects: Minds under siege

Paul Williams, London, Routledge, 2010, 252 pp.

This book is mostly a collection of the previous publications of the British psychoanalyst and anthropologist Paul Williams. A couple of chapters were written in conjunction with Murray Jackson, both authors having a long-standing interest in psychosis. Since the book is a compilation, each chapter can be enjoyed in its own right. There is however a leitmotif running throughout much of the book: the increasing evidence that contemporary psychoanalysis can make mutative changes in complex pathologically structured aspects of the mind that were laid down in the earliest history of the individual. These basic structures permeate the daily struggles of those adults who come for psychoanalysis as a result of constriction in their lives and their capacities in human relationships. The case material in this book is therefore connected with the psychoanalysis of very early disturbances in the sense of self, with accompanying theoretical explanations, and the author describes the challenges to technique and underlines the emotional demands on both psychoanalyst and analysand for this work to be sustained.

There were a number of chapters that I found myself particularly enthralled by. One chapter that has not been published before is about John Nash. Many readers will be familiar with A beautiful mind: the name of both a popular film and a biography that depict Nash's life including his very prolonged schizophrenic breakdown followed by recovery. Some regarded Nash's mathematical/economic theoretical advances as the greatest of the last century and indeed he was awarded the Nobel prize in 1994 for discoveries in economics made prior to his breakdown. Williams and Jackson, based on extensive information about Nash available in the public sphere, attempt a psychoanalytic understanding of Nash's psychosis and recovery and his pre-morbid vulnerability. Especially interesting are their psychoanalytic hypotheses on the remarkable obser