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Tom Main was a distinguished member of the British “Independent” group of psychoanalysts. While well schooled in one- and two-bodied theories, as his mentor, John Rickman put it, his primary interest and accomplishments had to do with adapting psychoanalytic theories and practices for triadic and other multibodied relationships. For many years Main was the Director of the Cassel Hospital, near London. This is a facility where individuals, couples, and families with severe psychoneurotic difficulties can live for an extended period and receive intensive psychoanalytic therapy within a therapeutic setting. This book, a selection of the many papers Main wrote during his lifetime, not only chronicles his great contributions to the theory and practice of the therapeutic community, but also shows that he was a psychoanalytic innovator who deployed systems theory and holistic practices long before their importance was recognized or terms were coined to describe them.
About half the papers describe the development of the analytically oriented therapeutic community. This work started after World War II when Main was searching for ways to treat emotionally traumatized soldiers. He found that the medical model was not adequate to the task, but that a social environment in which a free discussion of feelings was possible often led to remarkable changes. Patients who had been weak, apathetic, and undisciplined were able to reconstitute themselves and reestablish responsibility for their own lives. In Main's view the concept of a therapeutic community is an extension of the breakthrough Freud made through free associations — that is, studying a whole human experience, not just its