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SUMMARYThis brief introduction summarizes and gives the biographical context of Roger Money-Kyrle’s 1934 paper “A psychological analysis of the causes of war”. It also contextualizes his interest in the interplay between the psychological mechanisms operating within the individual, the society and groups and his personal experience with Germany in between and after two catastrophic wars.

ABSTRACTThe paper gives a survey of the origin of the concept of the super-ego in Freud’s work and its further elaboration within the different psychoanalytic traditions. It introduces three papers on the perverse and psychotic super-ego, the development of the concept in Bion’s work and its significance for psychoanalytic social psychology.

ABSTRACTThis contribution is a personal reflection on the papers presented at the New York and London anniversary conferences, in which the author takes stock to consider what they might tell us about where the discipline is now, where it has come from and where it might go. Taking the clinical contributions as evidence of the way many leading analysts in the field now proceed, it is suggested that there is an increasing and more and more subtle use of the analyst's behaviour, thoughts, fantasies, feelings and experiences, inside and outside the session, as core sources for constructing the patient's unconscious. Placing this observation in the context of issues of evidence raised in the 50th and 75th anniversary volumes, the author argues that a possible future agenda for the field may be to think more plainly about the basis of an analyst's knowledge claims, whether made implicitly or explicitly to patients in sessions. The author wonders if more disciplined understanding of transference consistent with neuroscientific findings of the last few years may be one factor that could prove useful.

Editor's note: Albert Mason discovered an unpublished paper by Donald Meltzer dating from around 1968 and has made the text available to the IJP. He writes “my best guess is that Meltzer gave me the paper to read/approve about the time I was preparing to move to Los Angeles (1968–69) and that I hastily packed it away with other papers. It got buried, and only came to light recently, kind of like a lost score that turns up in someone's attic!” The patient Meltzer discusses in his paper is a patient who Dr Mason treated for approximately 11 years, and about whom Dr Mason consulted with Dr Meltzer early in the treatment. Dr Mason has also provided the original report he wrote about the patient in the 1960s. Following an introduction by Dr Abbot Bronstein, we have published extracts from Dr Mason's report, including the following: details about the case, the two dreams which Dr Mason believes were ‘turning point dreams’, and a third dream called the ‘hula hula dream’, as well as the clinical material leading up to it.

Editor's note: Albert Mason discovered an unpublished paper by Donald Meltzer dating from around 1968 and has made the text available to the . He writes “my best guess is that Meltzer gave me the paper to read/approve about the time I was preparing to move to Los Angeles (1968–69) and that I hastily packed it away with other papers. It got buried, and only came to light recently, kind of like a lost score that turns up in someone's attic!” The patient Meltzer discusses in his paper is a patient who Dr Mason treated for approximately 11 years, and about whom Dr Mason consulted with Dr Meltzer early in the treatment. Dr Mason has also provided the original report he wrote about the patient in the 1960s. Following an introduction by Dr Abbot Bronstein, we have published extracts from Dr Mason's report, including the following: details about the case, the two dreams which Dr Mason believes were ‘turning point dreams’, and a third dream called the ‘hula hula dream’, as well as the clinical material leading up to it.

In this commentary on Paul Denis's paper ‘The drive revisited: mastery and satisfaction’, the author defends the idea of a plurality of metapsychologies that must be contrasted with and distinguished from each other while avoiding incompatible translations between models. In this connection he presents various theoretical approaches to aggression and the death drive, and demonstrates the differences between the drive model and the model underlying the theory of internalized object relations. The author holds that the concept of the internal object differs from Freud's notion of the representation (Vorstellung). He also considers that the imago as defined by Paul Denis in fact corresponds to the concept of the internal object. Lastly, he addresses the complex issue of listening to archaic forms of psychic functioning and their non‐discursive presentation within the analytic process, which affects the transference‐countertransference link.

In this commentary on Paul Denis's paper ‘The drive revisited: mastery and satisfaction’, the author defends the idea of a plurality of metapsychologies that must be contrasted with and distinguished from each other while avoiding incompatible translations between models. In this connection he presents various theoretical approaches to aggression and the death drive, and demonstrates the differences between the drive model and the model underlying the theory of internalized object relations. The author holds that the concept of the internal object differs from Freud's notion of the representation (Vorstellung). He also considers that the imago as defined by Paul Denis in fact corresponds to the concept of the internal object. Lastly, he addresses the complex issue of listening to archaic forms of psychic functioning and their non‐discursive presentation within the analytic process, which affects the transference‐countertransference link.

In this clinical paper, the author presents a coherent model for conceptualising the process of establishing a ‘containing object’ in the mind of the analysand throughout the course of analysis. The technical implications offered in this model derive mainly from concepts and notions put forward in three papers by Wilfred Bion and explicated by the present author: ‘A theory of thinking’ (1962/1988), in which Bion emphasises what he calls ‘realistic projective identification’, which functions as an unconscious form of communication to and calls for understanding on the part of the analyst that is aimed towards the development of thoughts and an apparatus with which to think thought; ‘Notes on memory and desire’ (1967/1988), in which he sets forth some ‘rules’ for the analytic work that is centred on the ‘here and now’ of the evolving therapeutic interaction; and his paper on ‘Evidence’ (1976/1987), wherein he focuses on the ‘fact’ of the individual analyst's emotional experience. The author also demonstrates, through the presentation of four detailed vignettes, some of the ways in which the analytic process may fail or succeed, highlighting the import of the analyst's capacity for ‘reverie’, ‘transformation’, and ‘publication’—all aspects of the containing function. In addition, she further expands upon Bion's work with a discussion of the essentials of ‘taking the transference’ and differentiates between two main dimensions of interpretation, ‘projective’ and ‘introjective’.

In this clinical paper, the author presents a coherent model for conceptualising the process of establishing a ‘containing object’ in the mind of the analysand throughout the course of analysis. The technical implications offered in this model derive mainly from concepts and notions put forward in three papers by Wilfred Bion and explicated by the present author: ‘A theory of thinking’ (1962/1988), in which Bion emphasises what he calls ‘realistic projective identification’, which functions as an unconscious form of communication to and calls for understanding on the part of the analyst that is aimed towards the development of thoughts and an apparatus with which to think thought; ‘Notes on memory and desire’ (1967/1988), in which he sets forth some ‘rules’ for the analytic work that is centred on the ‘here and now’ of the evolving therapeutic interaction; and his paper on ‘Evidence’ (1976/1987), wherein he focuses on the ‘fact’ of the individual analyst's emotional experience. The author also demonstrates, through the presentation of four detailed vignettes, some of the ways in which the analytic process may fail or succeed, highlighting the import of the analyst's capacity for ‘reverie’, ‘transformation’, and ‘publication’—all aspects of the containing function. In addition, she further expands upon Bion's work with a discussion of the essentials of ‘taking the transference’ and differentiates between two main dimensions of interpretation, ‘projective’ and ‘introjective’.

A critique is offered of the paper on non‐interpretive mechanisms in psychoanalytic therapy by the Process of Change Study Group (Stern et al., 1998a). The attention paid to procedural learning and to the need to attend to implicit relational knowledge is welcomed but a number of the group's assumptions are questioned. In particular, it is argued that the differences between mother‐infant and therapist‐patient relationships are inadequately considered, that the polarisation of non‐symbolic and verbal memory is unhelpful and that the separation of the therapy relationship into three strands is problematic. The assumption that pursuing the goal of intersubjective understanding is in itself therapeutic is questioned. It is suggested that the recognition of the importance of implicit relational knowledge calls for a wider reappraisal of important aspects of theory and practice and that direct means of making such knowledge explicit should be considered.

A critique is offered of the paper on non‐interpretive mechanisms in psychoanalytic therapy by the Process of Change Study Group (Stern et al., 1998a). The attention paid to procedural learning and to the need to attend to implicit relational knowledge is welcomed but a number of the group's assumptions are questioned. In particular, it is argued that the differences between mother‐infant and therapist‐patient relationships are inadequately considered, that the polarisation of non‐symbolic and verbal memory is unhelpful and that the separation of the therapy relationship into three strands is problematic. The assumption that pursuing the goal of intersubjective understanding is in itself therapeutic is questioned. It is suggested that the recognition of the importance of implicit relational knowledge calls for a wider reappraisal of important aspects of theory and practice and that direct means of making such knowledge explicit should be considered.