Review of Living in the shadow of the Freud family.

Reviews the book, Living in the shadow of the Freud family by Sophie Freud (see record 2007-07641-000). This book is fascinating for many reasons, not the least of which is that it is "written and edited" by Sophie Freud, Sigmund Freud's distinguished granddaughter, Professor Emerita of Social Work at Simmons College. The book will be of interest to anyone who wishes to learn more about the life and culture of the creator of psychoanalysis. The author challenges some of the assumptions made by Freud biographers, including the belief that his nursemaid stole pennies from the family, resulting in her firing and imprisonment. This book reveals the importance of writing. The author reminds us that the "psychological literature suggests that we should help old people to remember their childhood", and the book demonstrates the truth of this observation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relevance of Sigmund Freud for the 21st century.

This special issue of Psychoanalytic Psychology celebrates the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sigmund Freud on May 6, 1856. The 15 papers and one book review in different ways address the question of Freud's continued relevance. The contributors to this special issue approach the topic in multiple ways. Some authors stay close to the question, while other authors write on topics dear to them. All are, nonetheless, distinguished contributors to contemporary psychoanalysis and most need no introduction to the readership of this journal. Individual contributions to the special issue are summarized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A response to The relevance of Sigmund Freud for the 21st century.

The relevance of Freud's ideas for the 21st Century had been discussed (Reppen, 2006; see record 2006-05420-001). Although most of the contributors to that compendium believed that they were, I suggest that a 'yes' or 'no' answer is not possible with regard to the corpus of Freud's ideas as a whole; each idea has to be evaluated separately. Freud's theorizing is built on two different bases: a psychological and a biological one. Not only do these eventuate in two different kinds of formulations throughout this theory, but sometimes even with regard to the same construct at different times in his writing. As a consequence, the assessment of the relevance of Freud's ideas for the 21st Century must be made construct by construct. A sampling of Freud's ideas about motivation, psychopathology and treatment were examined as to their contemporary relevance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sandor Ferenczi: Book review.

Review of book: Ernst Falzeder and Eva Brabant (Eds.; Peter T. Hoffer, Trans.) The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sandor Ferenczi. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 473 pp. Reviewed by Paul Roazen. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Psychoanalysis: Freud’s cognitive psychology.

Reviews the book, Psychoanalysis: Freud’s cognitive psychology by Matthew Hugh Erdelyi (see record 1985-97974-000). Few psychoanalytic clinicians or experimental psychologists ever bother to develop a historical or meta-theoretical perspective on their discipline, or pause to ponder the obstacles encountered and avenues taken or ignored en route to a synthesis between psychoanalytic, experimental and cognitive psychology. For those who have already pondered these issues somewhat, Erdelyi's book is a positive pleasure, full of penetrating insights, programmatic suggestions and astute historical reflections. For those new to the area, it is the best available introduction to the field, grounded, as it is, in a fluent grasp of the various methods and models of unconscious mental processes in these increasingly convergent fields of inquiry. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Dispatches from the Freud wars: Psychoanalysis and its passions and Truth games: Lies, money and psychoanalysis.

Reviews the books, Dispatches from the Freud wars: Psychoanalysis and its passions by John Forrester (see record 1997-08548-000) and Truth games: Lies, money and psychoanalysis by John Forrester (see record 1997-36555-000). Although psychoanalysis has been attacked since its inception, the nature of the assaults has varied. Right now, it is being assailed in terms of the new trinity of race, class, and gender, to say nothing of its problematic position as a science, in a world that increasingly values technology. Even as a narrative system, it is accused of lacking credibility and causing damage more than cures. In Dispatches From the Freud Wars: Psychoanalysis and Its Passions, John Forrester, the philosopher and historian of science, provides a welcome cease-fire. Although his title refers to the current Freud wars, Forrester does not engage in any violent skirmish himself. Rather, he stands on the edge of battle, sending back reports from the defense as well as the enemy camp. His position is civilized rather than combative: balanced, measured, and a triumph of reason over id, perhaps too much so. Although the passions of Forrester's subtitle refer to the passions within psychoanalytic theory itself, the passions that it treats, and the passions that it arouses in its defendants as well as its opponents, Forrester himself is calm. Yet it is clear whose side he is on. Not that his book is only about the wars—in this sense, the title is misleading—for it treats such varied subjects as envy and justice, Ferenzi's love relationships, and Freud as a collector of artifacts as well as dreams. Readers coming to Forrester's most recent book, Truth Games: Lies, Money and Psychoanalysis, hoping to learn about the lies psychoanalysis reputedly tells (or the money it wrongly accrues) are going to be disappointed. This book grounds itself on the integrity of psychoanalysis. It never raises the question so prominent today of whether psychoanalytic theory is itself based on deception and fraud. While accepting that human beings lie and that patients' lies are somehow connected to psychoanalytic truth (insofar as they are revealing), it ignores the possibility of the lying analyst. In relation to truth, lies, and memory, Forrester writes that recognition of the importance of the transference led Freud to conclude that "success was achieved whether patient and analyst worked with memories or with impulses in the here and now" (Forrester, 1997, p. 77). He found "in free association and the analyst's withholding of belief and unbelief a means of isolating his practice from the problem of lying and deception" (p. 79). Following Lacan, Forrester notes that although psychoanalysis is predicated on the patient's telling the truth, its very techniques, such as free association, encourage the opposite. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The foundations of psychoanalysis: A philosophical critique.

Reviews the book by A. Grünbaum, a work of importance in the current, apparently ever-widening, debates about the "scienticity" of psychoanalysis. Grünbaum makes it clear that the inquiry moves toward a verdict of unproven with respect to the scientific claims of psychoanalytic clinical theory, perhaps even the stronger verdict of unprovable in the terms in which it is traditionally cast. Yet Grünbaum is not hospitable to the promiscuous reconstructions that set psychoanalysis apart from the mainstream of scientific endeavor, whether on subjectivist or phenomenological or hermeneutical grounds. As Grünbaum sees it, Freud rightly claimed that psychoanalysis was to be judged as a science in its study of human processes. Grünbaum's respect for Freud is given body by examining how Freud at various stages of his development formulated the logic of his own position and the structure of objections which he was setting out explicitly to answer. The first third of the book deals with broader philosophical foundations, the remainder with the specific critique of psychoanalytic clinical theory. Grünbaum's critique taps the deeper issues of the comparison of the sciences of nature and those of man, of the relation of science and the humanities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory.

The reviewer contends that this book deserves admiration for its masterly review of historical events in the development of psychoanalysis. It should be read by psychoanalysts not only for its enormous fund of skillfully assembled information about the formative years of Freud's thinking, but for its story of how new information was treated by some leaders of the psychoanalytic establishment. In the guise of protecting psychoanalysis, this information was dismissed as harmful. It is precisely such a well-meaning upholding of psychoanalytic doctrine that can throttle its growth. Although some of Masson's interpretations are made in the best Freudian style, Lewis remains unconvinced that, in what Masson calls a "failure of courage," Freud suppressed the truth. Nor did Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory lead to the present-day "sterility" of psychoanalysis, as Masson believes. Rather, the spurious need to defend psychoanalysis that Masson encountered during his investigations has also made many institutes sterile places. Masson thus confounds the limitations of some parts of the psychoanalytic establishment with the future of psychoanalysis itself. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of My Life in Theory.

Reviews the book, My Life in Theory by Leo Rangell (see record 2004-12815-000). Leo Rangell has been a central figure in the theoretical, clinical, and organizational aspects of psychoanalysis for over 6 decades. He is the only native-born American to become Honorary President of the International Psychoanalytic Association, where he twice was elected President. He also served 2 terms as President of the American Psychoanalytic Association. One might therefore view him and this intellectual autobiography as the voice of the ultimate "insider." To do so would, however, miss the independence and humanness of the author. Actually, this "autobiography" consists of several parallel strains. It is indeed a history of Rangell's lifetime journey and love affair with psychoanalysis; it is a critique of the direction that psychoanalysis has taken, and subsequently a call for a total composite theory, and finally, it is an attempt to set the record straight. Rangell states: "My goal has always been, and it is in this book, to present a view of a unitary psychoanalytic theory as this has cumulatively grown and progressed over the century" (p.50). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Learning from the patient.

Reviews the book, Learning from the patient by Patrick J. Casement (see record 1990-99045-000). Learning from the patient is intended as a textbook on the technique of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy for beginning students and supervisors. Despite a regrettable absence of unifying theoretical concepts, Casement's book is masterly in his entirely convincing account of the complexity of unconscious communications that occur between patient and therapist. Casement demonstrates an acute sensitivity directed inward plus an unfailing and unremitting honesty. If I were asked to recommend one book on technique for the beginning therapist, I would recommend Learning from the patient. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The Theater of Trauma: American Modernist Drama and the Psychological Struggle for the American Mind, 1900-1930.

Reviews the book, The Theater of Trauma: American Modernist Drama and the Psychological Struggle for the American Mind, 1900-1930 by Michael Cotsell (2005). For most of the 20th century, psychoanalytic theory and its myriad offshoots so pervasively influenced literary criticism in the United States that for many it is difficult to imagine examining American literature of that era through any other psychological lens. In his new book The Theater of Trauma: American Modernist Drama and the Psychological Struggle for the American Mind, 1900-1930, Michael Cotsell alerts us to the existence of an alternate psychological perspective that dominated the American landscape before Freudian analysis gained widespread acceptance on this side of the Atlantic--dissociationism. He makes a compelling case that from the waning years of the 19th through the early decades of the 20th century American modernist drama was primarily shaped not by psychoanalytic thought, but by dissociationist psychology. Cotsell argues that it is dissociationism that informed and sustained the modernist sensibility in American drama, and that once dissociationist psychology was eclipsed by psychoanalytic theory, the demise of modernist playwriting was inevitable. Despite the breadth of this book, it is no more realistic that a single work could provide the last word on the relevance of dissociationism to drama than that one volume could offer a comprehensive discussion of the pertinence of psychoanalytic theory to the theater. Cotsell reminds us of the existence of a conceptual framework that carries tremendous explanatory power in its capacity to cogently link the realm of the psychological and personal to that of the social and political. The continued ubiquity of trauma and dissociation in contemporary life render the dissociationist perspective as relevant today as it was in the modernist epoch. Consequently, the significance of The Theater of Trauma extends well beyond the specific territory it covers; it lies in its potential to open new vistas for psychology, for literary criticism, and a wide spectrum of other disciplines concerned with the interface between society and individual experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The homosexualities and the therapeutic process.

Reviews the book, The homosexualities and the therapeutic process by Charles W. Socarides and Vamik Volkan (see record 1992-97015-000). Socarides, one of the editors of this book, remains the most persistent and productive purveyor of the "homosexuality as pathology" school of psychoanalysis, having published voluminously on the subject for the last four decades. He is joined by Vamik Volkan, who has published more about topics other than homosexuality, including numerous papers on transsexualism, as co-editor for this volume of 14 chapters, 12 about men, 1 about a lesbian, and 1 about a female-to-male transsexual. This book, described as a companion to The homosexualities: Reality, fantasy, and the arts (Socarides & Volkan, 1991), is intended to explore "techniques for the psychoanalytic treatment of homosexuals" (p. 1). Most of the authors explicitly acknowledge their adherence to a theoretical position locating the origins of homosexuality in preoedipal conflicts, a theory that Socarides has repeatedly articulated. The editors state that many of their contributors provide clinical evidence to support this view, but in fact most of them start from this assumption, and weave clinical data together in such a way that it can only lead back to the first principle. The angry tone of some of the authors in this book reminded Stein that the risk of abuse by therapists of patients solely because of their sexual orientation is not something of the past. The most fundamental problem with this book lies, of course, in the explicit adherence by most of the authors to the belief that homosexuality in whatever form it appears in their patients and regardless of its specific mode of expression, arises invariably from conflict and pathology. According to the reviewer, The homosexualities and the therapeutic process is of historical interest as a vestige of psychiatric and psychoanalytic doctrines that were used to create and to perpetuate those psychological myths and stereotypes about homosexuality and the lives of gay men and lesbians that reinforced the homophobic attitudes of the larger society. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Speak of me as I am: The life and work of Masud Khan.

Reviews the book, Speak of me as I am: The life and work of Masud Khan by Judy Cooper (1993). Controversy surrounding M. Masud R. Khan the person usually crowds out serious consideration of his psychoanalytic writings. In Speak of me as I am, Judy Cooper, a psychotherapist in London, convincingly demonstrates that, despite his life, Khan's work has enduring value and would amply reward anyone who studies it. She has a difficult task, to give the reader a familiarity--and even sympathy--with Khan while not minimizing his always off-putting and frequently repulsive behavior. One would think that the task would be all the more daunting because she herself had an analysis with Khan from 1967 to 1973. Far from providing an idealized portrait of her former analyst, however, Cooper openly discusses Khan's shortcomings. The book is so successful in part because her years of closeness with him enable her to convey an insider's sense of what Khan was like. In a compact space--only 122 pages of text--Cooper achieves her main purposes: familiarizing the reader with Khan's life and work while also evaluating his contributions to psychoanalysis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The religious and romantic origins of psychoanalysis: Individuation and integration in post-Freudian theory.

Reviews the book, The religious and romantic origins of psychoanalysis: Individuation and integration in post-Freudian theory by Suzanne R. Kirschner (see record 1996-97744-000). Kirschner traces the origins of contemporary psychoanalytic thought back to the foundations of Judeo-Christian culture, challenging the prevailing assumption that modern theories of the self constitute a serious break from religious and cultural tradition. She suggests that current psychoanalytic theories are simply the latest version of a progressively secularized narrative that has been in process for the past two millennia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Progress in Self Psychology, Volume 2.

Similar to the 1st volume of Progress in Self Psychology, this 2nd volume is a collection of invited papers and papers from national conferences devoted to this area of psychoanalysis. According to Goldberg, these volumes are intended, perhaps temporarily, to serve as a substitute for a journal in self-psychology. Loosely divided into sections on theory, clinical problems, development, and applied psychoanalysis, the collection serves as a sampler of contemporary issues, but does not provide a unified structure for theory and practice that some readers may expect of want from a cutting-edge book. The one issue that rings clearly throughout the book is how self psychology compares and contrasts to classical psychoanalysis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The Psychoanalytic Process: Theory, Clinical Observation and Empirical Research.

The authors have tied their theory of psychopathology to notions of what fosters therapeutic progress and have then taken the unusual step of testing these ideas systematically and scientifically. Their book will appeal especially to those who are receptive to a cognitively oriented psychoanalytic approach and who advocate more informed, scientifically rigorous psychoanalytic research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The talking cures: The psychoanalyses and the psychotherapies.

Reviews the book, The talking cures: The psychoanalyses and the psychotherapies by Robert Wallerstein (see record 1995-98727-000). This book is not a book for reading, it is a compendium, nearly 600 pages long, for consulting. Each of its 25 chapters is a survey of a particular concept or controversy involved in the history of definitions of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Each contains a potted minihistory or two or three, many digests of relevant articles and books, reports on symposia and conferences and special issues of journals, long quotations cut and pasted in by computer, summaries of already published summaries (so many of which were written by Wallerstein that this volume is, in effect, his collected articles abstracted). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Empirical Studies of Psychoanalytic Theories, Volume 2.

This text consists of 7 chapters. With one exception, each author reviews his or her own programmatic research, along with related empirical and theoretical findings. This was also the format in Volume 1. The reviewer found a commonality in these contributions--representing as they do vital, but varied approaches to experimental psychoanalytic psychology--an interest in the question: What is the nature and the development of thinking and how does it vary in psychopathological states? Volume 2 provides a general education to the psychoanalyst and also stimulates and extends his or her theoretical and research interests. The chapters, different as they are in methodology, topic, and style of presentation, represent a shared and successful effort to further knowledge through a reasoned psychoanalytic empiricism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Freud and the Rat Man.

Reviews the book, Freud and the Rat Man by Patrick J. Mahony (1986). Mahony has three general aims in this book. One, his main purpose, is to show how dynamic, transference, and countertransference issues influence Freud's expressive style and are also revealed in the linguistic and para-linguistic characteristics of patient/therapist verbal interactions. His second aim is to demonstrate the inadequacy of much of Strachey's English translation of Freud's writings. The third, and, in the view of this reader, the most interesting theme of the book focuses on the degree of congruence between Freud's process notes and the published case history of the Rat Man. One finds in this book two contradictory stances--on the one hand, there is Mahony the skeptic uncovering inaccuracies in Freud's published case history and raising some critical issues. On the other hand, a good part of the book reflects some of the difficulties that afflict a good deal of psychoanalytic writing--difficulties that, given Mahony's impressive critical abilities, one would have expected him to avoid. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The ability to mourn: Disillusionment and the social origins of psychoanalysis.

Reviews the book, The ability to mourn: Disillusionment and the social origins of psychoanalysis by Peter Homans (see record 1989-98118-000). Within the broadly defined goal of investigating the social origins of psychoanalysis, this book undertakes a series of strikingly original and thought-provoking explorations into the history of the psychoanalytic movement, its place in the traditions of Western culture, and its possible role in defining a more satisfactory relationship to modernity. In addition to providing a sociological study of one of the most influential movements of our time, the book also attempts to put forward a new psychoanalytic theory of culture capable of overcoming the limitations of Freud's cultural theories. The book is divided into three parts, the first two of which are devoted primarily to the origins and early development of psychoanalysis while the third takes up the contemporary cultural significance of psychoanalysis and the author's own theory of culture. The underlying thesis of the first two parts of the book is that psychoanalysis arose from a centuries-long process of mourning dating as far back as the 14th century. In his search for a theory of culture appropriate to the problems of modernity, as in his explorations of the history of the psychoanalytic movement and the origins of psychoanalysis, Homans provides an unusually creative and original perspective on issues of fundamental importance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)