Analyst of the Imagination: The Life and Work of Charles Rycroft

281 Pages·2004·1.21 MB·English

by  Jenny Pearson

ANALYST
OF THE IMAGINATION

ANALYST
OF THE IMAGINATION
The Life and Work of
Charles Rycroft
edited by
Jenny Pearson
KARNAC
KARNAC
LONDON NEWYORK
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TSBN 9781855759046
109 S 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Editd�,d ese:nied,a nd prDu<<i:de byC ommunication Crafts
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For Charles,
with love and gratitude

CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS xi
Introduction
Jenny Pearson 1
1 Charles Rycroft: a memoir
Anthony Storr 14
2 Outstanding within the “impossible” profession
John Padel 20
3 Charles Rycroft’s contribution to contemporary
psychoanalytic psychotherapy
Jeremy Holmes 24
4 Charles Rycroft and ablation
Paul Roazen 39
vii
viii CONTENTS
5 The development of Charles Rycroft’s thought
Margaret Arden 57
6 Insiders and outsiders
Susan Budd 73
7 The question of independence in psychotherapy
Peter Lomas 88
8 Rebel Rycroft
Dudley Young 94
9 A brief history of illusion: Milner, Winnicott, Rycroft
John Turner 113
10 On bridging continuity and precision:
the hidden music of psychoanalysis
Robin Higgins 145
11 Charles Rycroft and the historical perspective
Edgar Jones 155
12 The innocence of Charles Rycroft
Harold Bourne 164
13 Glimpses of a life
Jenny Pearson 192
14 Further glimpses
R. D. Laing, Maryon Tysoe, Peter Fuller, Vincent Brome 229
15 The last word . . .
Charles Rycroft 241
INDEX 249
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My warmest thanks to all the authors who have contrib-
uted chapters or parts of chapters and stayed patiently
with the processes of editing and proof-reading; to Hilda
Padel and Catherine Peters for permission to include chapters by
their late husbands, John Padel and Anthony Storr, and for writing
biographical notes; and to Jutta Laing, widow of R. D. Laing, for
help with his biographical note.
I am indebted to Paul Roazen for his encouragement, which got
me started on the book and helped to keep up my enthusiasm, and
to Margaret Arden, Robin Higgins, Lesley Murdin, and Dudley
Young for support along the way. I would especially like to thank
Charles’s three children, Julia Jama, Catherine Merriman, and
Frank Rycroft, and his sister Alice Harvey, for their confidence in
me as an editor and for contributing personal memoirs to the
biographical chapter “Glimpses of a Life”; also Rosemary Gordon,
Judith Hubback, and Pearl King, who knew Charles at different
points in his early life and gave generously of their time to look
back and remember.
I thank Vincent Brome for an enjoyable interview and for per-
mission to include a slightly edited version of his Guardian obituary
ix