Introduction

Siegfried Bernfeld argued that Sigmund Freud built psychoanalysis as an instrument through which a refinement of ordinary conversation is used as a method for the investigation of the unconscious. In January 1959, W. R. Bion had talked of the light that clinical work in psychoanalysis can throw on common sense: common sense is revised by the formalisation of clinical problems—and so is observation, judgement, and 'that particular instance of scientific hypothesis and deduction known to us as a psycho-analytic interpretation'. J. Rickman and Bernfeld, like Jacques Lacan, stressed the importance of the work of Kurt Lewin. 'The work of Lewin and his pupils' said Bernfeld, had provided exactly the right direction of research to be able to take up tike delicate 'difficult—and fascinating' problems of the structure of the human soul. Lewin had proposed investigating spaces the structure of which constitutes the psychological determination of the individual.