What Do Our Terms Mean?

Anne Hayman, FRCPsych, MRes, DPM, is a Foundation Member and Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. She was a training analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society, a child analyst, and the author of numerous journal articles and contributions to books.

• Controversies in Psychoanalysis Series -- Preface -- Introduction -- Some thoughts on the inner world and the environment*,† -- Ideas stirred by “On communication: a comment on ‘Catastrophic change’” by W. R. Bion -- What do we mean by “id”? -- Muddles and metaphors: some thoughts about psychoanalytic words -- On Marjorie Brierley -- What do we mean by “phantasy”? -- Some remarks about the “Controversial Discussions”*,† -- What do our terms mean? -- A psychoanalyst looks at some problems concerning evidence and motives -- Postface

'With the creation of the "Project Committee on Conceptual Integration", the International Psychoanalytical Association has recently stressed once again the need to try and give greater coherence to our current psychoanalytical terminology. With respect to this important issue, the reader of Anne Hayman's book What do our Terms Mean? will undoubtedly find convincing first-hand material to think upon. Active, attentive and a perceptive witness for a long time of the most important theoretical and scientific debates within the British Psychoanalytical Society, she has recollected in this volume some of her most valuable and historical writings, which cannot but strongly interest all those who are passionate in the history and the development of psychoanalytical thinking. Anne Hayman's articles range from an exhaustive discussion of such fundamental concepts as the "inner world", "phantasy", the "Id", Bion's "Catastrophic Change" and others, to her very thoughtful evaluation of the general issues raised by psychoanalytic words and terms, from her research on Marjory Brierley and the historical period of the "Controversial Discussions" to the complicated question of legal "evidence and motives" discussed by her from a strictly psychoanalytical point of view. I am therefore sure that this volume, which enriches the IPA Controversies in Psychoanalysis series, will encounter the favour of all psychoanalysts and psychoanalytical students worldwide.'- Gennaro Saragnano, MD, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Chair of the Publications Committee of the International Psychoanalytical Association