ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores both the theoretical and clinical development of the original ideas. It illustrates some of the clinical implications of foundational concepts from the work of theorists of the primordial mind, especially Andre Green, Wilfred Bion, and D. W. Winnicott. Anna Freud had good reason not to venture this far from his discovery of the repressed and organized unconscious and its surrounding universe of presences. He remained absorbed with its clinical and theoretical ramifications and rarely explored more inchoate possibilities. Green went on at length to discuss the clinical challenge posed by the patients “who [also] cannot use the setting as a facilitating environment”, indeed make a “non-use of it”. Green’s perception of the need to adopt this new theoretical foundation and clinical stance, to rethink the treatment of non-neurotic patients, met with keen opposition from Freud.
