ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concept discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines French psychoanalysis is much more grounded in Freudian metapsychology and Freudian concepts than is British psychoanalysis and reflects the powerful and sustained influence of Lacan's early call for a 'return to Freud', away from what he identified as the revisionist ego psychology that had become dominant in America immediately after the war. To this day, French psychoanalysts make much use of Winnicott and also of Bion in their writings, and considerably less of Klein, although they quite regularly use the notion of a 'depressive position'. In French psychoanalysis, the role of the penis and its symbolic counterpart the phallus is central, whether or not analysts subscribe to the theory of phallic monism. The metaphor of the theatre is a recurring theme in French psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is conceived of and represented as a three-dimensional space, a theatre where unconscious scenes are staged.
