By Christopher Badcock

From the Preface: “'If my father were alive today, I don't think he would want to be a psychoanalyst.' This remark was made to me more than once by Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's daughter and successor in psychoanalysis, in the year or two before her death in 1982. When on one occasion I asked her what she thought her father would want to be if he were alive today, she was less sure. However, that he would not wish to be a psychoanalyst she was adamant.

This, and other similar remarks by Anna Freud, greatly increased my uncertainty about what I wanted to be when the analysis I had been undergoing withher was abruptly terminated by her death. It had begun in 1979, at a time when she was wel past the maximum age at which the analvtic professionwill allow an analyst to begin an official training analvsis with a student. As a result, I faced the prospect of starting more or less at the beginning if I wished to qualify as a psychoanalyst, and of course with a new training analyst.

London. HarperCollins Publishers. 1995. 218p. CONTAINS MARK-UP