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In this, his second book, Forces of Destiny Christopher Bollas examines the particular nature of the psychoanalytic experience. The first section is devoted to an exploration of his theoretical positions and the second contains a set of clinical essays exemplifying these.
Bollas occupies a theoretical and technical position squarely within the Independent Group of the British Psychoanalytical Society. The Society was divided into two factions during World War II due to the conflict between Melanie Klein and Anna Freud and their respective followers. The majority of the British Society did not wish to fall into either camp and formed the so-called Middle or Independent Group (loosely described as the Object Relations School). This is associated with names such as Ernest Jones, Ronald Fairbairn, John Bowlby, and especially Donald Winnicott, whose influence is clearly seen in Forces of Destiny. It is the concern of the Independent Group to promote not one particular ideological cause within psychoanalysis, but instead to resemble a loose federation of those with a similar therapeutic and theoretical stance. Perhaps the group particularly suits Bollas with his American origin and background in literature and education.
The Independent Group tends to see pathology as coming from real, faulty object relationships that are subsequently repeated in the analytic situation. In particular they are concerned with technique, with the analysis of the affective response of the analyst to the patient's mood, and with the emotional communications within the session.
Bollas makes his position clear:
“I believe what I describe is a form of play in the analytic situation…. I disagree both with those analysts who systematically and rigorously translate the patient's discourse into transference interpretations (all in the name of pure analysis) and with those who believe that each patient needs constant affective and interpretive adjustment from the analyst in order to be understood. The fir