Description
For those of us who grew up in the psychoanalysis of the 60s and 70s, Merton Gill’s formulation of psychoanalytic theory was psychoanalytic theory – the definitive statement. Much has happened in psychoanalysis since that time – the challenge to metapsychology, the expansion of object relations approaches, the development of self psychology, the reformulation of transference and countertransference, and the debates about hermeneutics, constructivism, and one-person and two-person psychologies. Merton Gill has been central in these dialogues, bringing his familiar scholarship, clarity of thought, and commitment to balanced and open-minded exploration of new ideas to discussions that were so often obscured by ideological prejudices and religious convictions. In the process Gill’s views have evolved; indeed his own contributions from the past are often the strongest arguments that can be raised against his new ideas. He has become far more focused on the clinical process – psychoanalytic theory as a tool for the analyst at work. He is far more sensitive to the patient’s experience – the analyst and the analytic process are not what the theory dictates or the analyst believes they are, but rather what the analyst and the patient make of them. He is, above all, committed to analyzing, to the continued and repeated exploration of the analytic interaction. His latest volume is about what interests him the most – ‘the nature of psychological therapy informed by psychoanalytic concepts.’ In it, he once again demonstrates that his is one of the most youthful minds in contemporary psychoanalysis.
