Table Of Content“Howard Levine’s fascinating volume of André Green’s work ofers
anglophone access to previously untranslated papers that are missing pieces
in Green’s intellectual journey. The seven chapters along with Levine’s
introduction illuminate central metapsychological concepts that Green
brings forward, along with their crucial clinical implications. Deeply rooted
in Freud’s oeuvre but acknowledging Bion and Winnicott’s contributions,
Green proposes here his key conceptions of the frame, ‘the double-limit’,
death-drive, language and silence.”
Marilia Aisenstein, author of An Analytic Journey and
Desire, Pain, Thought (Routledge)
“Howard Levine collects valuable gold nuggets from the great mine that is
the vast oeuvre of André Green and makes them available to the English-
speaking reader. With these texts, he shines a powerful light on Green’s
indispensable contributions to contemporary psychoanalysis. It is evident
in this volume how the French author, starting from his Freudian roots
and infuenced by Lacan, Winnicott and Bion, brings extremely original
and at the same time fundamental contributions to the psychoanalyst of
today. An indispensable read!”
Ruggero Levy, Full Member and Training Analyst of the
Porto Alegre Psychoanalytic Society (SPPA – Brasil)
The Freudian Matrix
of André Green
The Freudian Matrix of André Green presents seven papers, never previously
published in English, that will allow readers to more closely follow and
more fully understand the development of Green’s unique psychoanalytic
thinking.
The chapters in this book provide valuable insight into Green’s response
to a perceived crisis in psychoanalysis. His thinking synthesizes the work
of Lacan, Winnicott, Bion and other post-Freudian authors with his own
extensive clinical experience, and results in a much needed extension
of psychoanalytic theory and practice to non-neurotic patients. Green’s
focus on drives, afect and the work of the negative and his introduction
and exploration of the Dead Mother complex, narcissism, negative
hallucination and the death instinct constitute a vital expansion of
Freudian metapsychology and its application to the clinical setting.
The Freudian Matrix of André Green will be essential reading for
psychoanalysts in practice and in training, and for any reader looking to
understand more about the enormity of his contribution.
Howard B. Levine is a private practitioner in Brookline, Massachusetts.
He is editor-in-chief of the Routledge Wilfred R. Bion Studies Book Series,
the author of Afect, Representation and Language: Between the Silence and the
Cry and has edited and co-edited André Green Revisited: Representation and
the Work of the Negative, Unrepresented States and the Construction of Meaning
and The Post-Bionian Field Theory of Antonino Ferro (all Routledge).
Psychoanalytic Ideas and Applications Series
Series Editor: Silvia Flechner
IPA Publications Committee
Fred Busch, Natacha Delgado, Nergis Güleç, Thomas Marcacci, Carlos
Moguillansky, Rafael Mondrzak, Angela M. Vuotto, Gabriela Legoretta
(consultant)
Recent titles in the Series include
What Nazism Did to Psychoanalysis
Laurence Kahn
The Deconstruction of Narcissism and the Function of the Object
Explorations in Psychoanalysis
René Roussillon
The Infnite Infantile and the Psychoanalytic Task
Psychoanalysis with Children, Adolescents and their Families
Edited by Nilde Parada Franch, Christine Anzieu-Premmereur, Mónica
Cardenal and Majlis Winberg Salomonsson
A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Trauma
Post-Traumatic Mental Functioning, the Zero Process, and the
Construction of Reality
Joseph Fernando
The Poetry of the Word in Psychoanalysis
Selected Papers of Pere Folch Mateu
Edited by J.O. Esteve and Jordi Sala
The Freudian Matrix of André Green
Towards a Psychoanalysis for the Twenty-First Century
Edited by Howard B. Levine
Desire, Pain and Thought
Primal Masochism and Psychoanalytic Theory
Marilia Aisenstein
The Freudian Matrix
of André Green
Towards a Psychoanalysis for the
Twenty-First Century
Edited and Introduction
by Howard B. Levine
Translated by Dorothée Bonnigal-Katz
and Andrew Weller
Designed cover image: The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and
the Infant Saint John the Baptist (“The Burlington House Cartoon”),
Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1499–1500. The National Gallery. Purchased
with a special grant and contributions from the Art Fund, The
Pilgrim Trust, and through a public appeal organized by the Art
Fund, 1962.
Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4 frst published in French as
VI – “Après-coup, l’archaïque” (1982)
VIII – “La double limite” (1982)
IX – “Le silence du psychanalyste” (1979)
X – “La capacité de rêverie et le mythe étiologique” (1987)
La folie privée. Psychanalyse des cas-limites © Éditions Gallimard, Paris,
1990
Chapter 5, 6 and 7 frst published in “Du signe au discours” pages 31
to 60, Les Editions d’Itaque, 2011, Paris; “La clinique psychanalytique
contemporaine”, pages 5 to 30, Les Editions d’Ithaque, 2012, Paris;
“La clinique psychanalytique contemporaine”, pages 79 to 105, Les
Editions d’Ithaque, 2012, Paris.
First published in English 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Howard B. Levine; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of Howard B. Levine to be identifed as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-032-39524-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-39521-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-35013-2 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003350132
Typeset in Palatino
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Series editor’s foreword viii
Acknowledgements x
Sources of the original texts xi
Introduction: Why Green? By Howard B. Levine 1
1 Après-coup, the archaic 15
2 The double limit 36
3 The silence of the psychoanalyst 53
4 The capacity for reverie and the etiological myth 75
5 Language within the general theory of representation 91
6 The psychoanalytic frame: Its internalization
by the analyst and its application in practice 120
7 Dismembering the countertransference: What we
have gained and lost with the extension
of the countertransference 141
Index 165
Series editor’s foreword
The Publications Committee of the International Psychoanalytic Associa-
tion continues, with the present volume, the series “Psychoanalytic Ideas
and Applications”.
The aim of this series is to focus on the scientifc production of signif-
cant authors whose works are outstanding contributions to the develop-
ment of the psychoanalytic feld and to set out relevant ideas and themes,
generated during the history of psychoanalysis, that deserve to be known
and discussed by present day psychoanalysts.
The relationship between psychoanalytic ideas and their applications
needs to be put forward from the perspective of theory, clinical prac-
tice and research, in order to maintain their validity for contemporary
psychoanalysis.
The Publication’s Committee’s objective is to share these ideas with the
psychoanalytic community and with professionals in other related dis-
ciplines, in order to expand their knowledge and generate a productive
interchange between the text and the reader. The IPA Publications Com-
mittee is pleased to publish The Freudian Matrix of André Green: Towards a
Psychoanalysis for the 21st Century, edited by Howard Levine.
This book grew out of the editor’s awareness that there were several
important papers by André Green that had not been translated into Eng-
lish. Dr Levine and Fernando Urribari (who worked closely with André
Green for many years) selected seven of these untranslated essays based
on what they considered would be most relevant to an English-speaking
readership. With the support of the IPA Publications Committee, excel-
lent English translations were produced by Dorothée Bonnigal-Katz and
Andrew Weller. The seven translated chapters refect this work, ofering
readers access to ground-breaking, previously untranslated papers of
André Green.
What is extraordinarily valuable about the work of André Green and
about this book in particular is that it provides a unique opportunity to
go back to Freud’s ground-breaking contributions which form the pillars
of psychoanalysis. During his career, André Green brilliantly unearthed
Freud’s genius, highlighting its fundamental importance in contemporary
Series editor’s foreword ix
psychoanalysis while proposing numerous important concepts, such as
the work of the negative, that emanate from Freud’s metapsychology.
André Green carefully interweaves his clinical and theoretical contribu-
tions with those of Freud. With this in mind, the editor, Howard Levine,
rightly proposes that Freud and Green provide the foundation for a con-
temporary psychoanalysis of the 21st century.
In his study of unrepresented states, André Green goes back to early
contributions in Freud’s thinking, in particular to the economic perspec-
tive proposed by Freud in his understanding of the workings of the psy-
che. In paying particular attention to this, he underlines the importance of
unrepresentable forces such as the impulse, the drive, the discharge and
the act. These forces have the capacity to disrupt the capacity to think, to
symbolize and to communicate internal experiences.
In the introduction to this volume, “Why Green?”, one can appreciate
Dr Levine’s deep understanding of Green’s thinking and of those authors
that infuenced him such as Bion, Winnicott and Lacan. He brilliantly cap-
tures the essence of the ideas and contributions of each paper. In this man-
ner, he gives the reader not only an overview of the content of the book,
but a desire to discover these previously inaccessible papers.
Each of the seven chapters is one of Green’s papers. One will fnd
“Après-coup, the archaic”; “The double limit; The silence of the psycho-
analyst”; “The capacity for reverie and the etiological myth”; “Language
within the general theory of representation”; “The psychoanalytic frame:
Its internalization by the analyst and its application in practice”; and “Dis-
membering the countertransference: What we have gained and lost with
the extension of the countertransference”.
This book is a remarkable addition to the English-speaking readership
both for those who are already acquainted with Green’s work as well
as for those who want to discover and appreciate his ground-breaking
contributions in the feld of psychoanalysis. One should be thankful to
Dr Levine for having had the initiative to take on this important project
and for bringing it to fruition.
Gabriela Legorreta
Series Editor
Chair, IPA Publications Committee
