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Marion Oliner's Cultivating Freud's Garden in France is really two books. One is a general study of psychoanalysis in France. The other is a group of specific studies of French analysts whose work is somewhat, or not at all, known in the United States. The “first” book is problematic, and the “second” invaluable. For now, awaiting further translations and critical debate, Oliner's (second) book is an excellent general introduction to the work of Bela Grunberger and Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel (already known), Michel Fain, Denise Braunschweig, Pierre Marty, and Piera Castoriadis-Aulagnier. She also discusses aspects of the work of such other major figures as Andre Green, Didier Anzieu, Michel de M'Uzan, Colette Chiland, Claude Le Guen, Jean Laplanche, Francois Roustang, and others. (I leave aside Joyce McDougall, who is the only familiar figure here.) This roster alone demonstrates the scope of Oliner's endeavor. But to combine an exposition and critique of such major figures with a general history of analysis in France is probably too much for any single work. Would anyone think it feasible to introduce the work of a group of prominent American analysts (imagine Kernberg, Kohut, Arlow, Brenner, Loewald, Mahler, Jacobson, Greenson, Hartmann, etc.) to a French audience along with a history of psychoanalysis in the U.S.? Something would have to suffer.
Thus, Oliner is at her best in her own field. She has thoroughly absorbed the unfamiliar, enlightening, and/or controversial ideas of some French analysts on such vital topics as narcissism, perversion, female sexuality, psychosomatic illness, mental representation, the drives, and so on. Her discussions of these topics offer the American analyst new, lucidly explained ideas that enrich theory and practice. And the analyst unfamiliar with such other topics as the anal phallus, operative thinking, libidinal exhaustion, and the originating process can do no better than to turn to Oliner's expositions.
The problems arise in the