Resonance of Suffering

Andre Green (1927-2012) was a psychoanalyst who lived and worked in Paris. He was President of the Paris Psycho-Analytical Society and was Vice-President of the International Psychoanalytic Association. He was co-editor of the Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse. He also wrote numerous books, including 'On Private Madness', 'The Work of the Negative', 'The Fabric of Affect in the Psychoanalytical Discourse', 'The Chains of Eros', 'Life Narcissism. Death Narcissism' and 'Key Ideas for a Contemporary Psychoanalysis'.

Contributors: Andre Green, William I. Grossman, Otto F. Kernberg, Gregorio Kohon, Jaime M. Lutenberg, Jean-Claude Rolland, Elizabeth Bott Spillius, Fernando Urribarri'This book is the result of Andre Green's initiative in getting together a stellar group of eight analysts from four key regions (France, England, the USA and Latin America), which met for six sessions in Paris over a three-year period in order to study Borderline Personality Disorders. Although Green wanted the group to focus on the issue of countertransference - undoubtedly because of these patient's impairment in the capacity to symbolize early traumata - it soon became apparent that the group needed to broaden the topic to the entire field of non-neurotic disorders including diagnostic, dynamic, theoretical and technical approaches. The discussions and detailed clinical presentations reveal the cutting edge of the thinking of very experienced clinicians on the topic. Six of the eight participants wrote a chapter including a detailed clinical vignette and a summary of their sense of the discussions. The chapters are very frank and reveal many areas of agreement in addition to major disagreements about the technical management of these patients, ranging from the frankly psychotic to rather severe neurotics and character disorder. The search for a common language, and agreement on definitions of terms and modalities of treatment, illuminate the wide gaps in understanding between different analytic communities and the process by which these differences may be engaged in a non polemic manner. This allows the reader an unusual degree of participation in the struggles of the group to reach consensus on complicated issues of tactics and strategy. The book will be useful to both students and experienced practitioners.- Francis D. Baudry

• The International Psychoanalysis Library , Introduction: a unique experience , Psychoanalysts doing exploratory research: the borderline patient, the borderline situation, and the question of diagnosis , The central phobic position: with a model of the free-association method , Lavoisier’s law applies to mental matter , Mental void and the borderline patient , Transference and countertransference management with borderline patients , Reflections on a group investigating borderline personality , The analyst’s psychic work and the three concepts of countertransference , Contributions Made at the Final Meeting of the IPA Research Group, September 2003 , Pulling it together , On the relevance of the borderline situation , Borderline traces and the question of diagnosis