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 Freud and the Legacy of Moses.

Review of book: Richard J. Bernstein. Freud and the Legacy of Moses. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998, xii & 151 pp. Reviewed by Emanuel Rice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of A History of Western Psychology.

Reviews the book, A History of Western Psychology by David Murray (No Year Specified). According to Marshall, this book is intended as a text for a full-year course on history, systems, and twentieth century developments in psychology. The 400-page book covers psychological ideas "from Plato through NATO," and it does so briskly. Two chapters are devoted to ancient and medieval ideas, two to subsequent events until the nineteenth century, and four to nineteenth century developments; Gestalt, behaviourism, and psychoanalysis are given separate chapters; and two terminal chapters are devoted, respectively, to new directions until 1940 and eclectic psychological developments up to 1980. There are two salient features which distinguish the book in addition to its attention to both ancient and contemporary psychology. The first is that, throughout, it relies strongly on an interpretation and presentation of primary sources rather than on a gathering of already published compendia. Another example is Murray's treatment of Spencer, Lewes, Carpenter, Lubbock, and Romanes. Murray's work and frequent quotations from original sources leave the reader with the lively sense of being in touch with the original authors' intents and styles. A shortcoming which stems from this same insistence on original interpretation of primary sources is that the reader sometimes does not benefit from the work of other recent and more detailed scholarly interpretations. The second salient feature of the textbook is that it is unabashedly internalistic. It refers only superficially to the contextual features of the intellectual and sociopolitical cultures which, variously, fostered or retarded psychology, first when it existed only as a bundle of ideas, then later when it emerged as a disciplinary institution. There are no references to historical methodology, and this illustrates the fact that Murray's book is just not methodologically self-conscious at all. Without apology, Murray is interested in showing the succession of psychological ideas, with little concern for explaining how they happened that way. However, Marshall notes that this book also provides some excellent learning and memory aids for students untutored in history and, perhaps, uninterested in history for its own sake. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Recollecting Freud.

Reviews the book, Recollecting Freud by Isidor Sadger (2005). The author, Isidor Sadger (1867-1942), was a Viennese neurologist who first heard Freud lecture in September 1895, and then later joined (1906) Freud's Wednesday Psychological Society. The name of that organization was later changed to the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, and Sadger remained in it until 1933. The book itself contains, he tells us, "nothing other than what I personally experienced, and the impressions that Freud's character, his actions and writing made on me. In no place have I sought to present biographical details that I did not myself witness" (p. 5). This review is presented in two parts: (1) an examination of its merits and limitations, and (2) an explanation of how a text first written in the late 1920s came to be published now for the first time. (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 Physiological Psychology.

Reviews the book, Physiological Psychology by Peter M. Milner (see record 1971-03512-000). Milner points out that studies in the field of Physiological Psychology generate at the rate of over 1,000 per year and that for both student and teacher critical evaluation of the literature is increasingly difficult. Accordingly Milner presents a text which, while up to date in content areas, stresses a theory based evaluation approach to the galloping research enterprise. The text begins with elementary matter on physiology and anatomy on the assumption that psychologists are not well grounded in these subjects. Milner has prepared a well organized, well written text. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of A Dialectical Psychology.

Reviews the book, A Dialectical Psychology by Allan R. Buss (1979). This collection of papers, most of them previously published, covers topics as diverse as attribution theory, life-span development, humanistic psychology, history of differential psychology, interactionism, the relations of fact and theory and of individual and society, and the future of psychology in general. Those who seek in this book a dialectical psychology will find it neither explained nor exemplified. While interesting connections are drawn from time to time between psychological theory and the social-historical context, it is not clear what is so "critical" about the way in which they are drawn, nor does one ever attain the feeling of having been led very far beyond "mere surface appearance." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Meeting Freud's family.

Reviews the book, Meeting Freud's family by Paul Roazen (see record 1993-99040-000). Over the years, Roazen has built a reputation as an expert on Freud. This is not a view to which many Freud scholars would be inclined to subscribe, but their opinions do not reach the general educated public to any appreciable extent. For most people, anything written about Freud that is thought to carry authority is considered informed comment on the psychoanalytic discipline itself. Roazen's new book is likely to be seized on for further enlightenment and, in view of its title, for inside information. "This book," he tells us, "is an attempt to re-create--based on my understanding of the place of psychoanalysis in intellectual history--the world of Freud's family life" (p. 16). What he wants to report is "the whole ambience surrounding these, people, and how their lives said something special about Freud" (p. 16). He wants to do this on the basis of personal interviews. The family Roazen met were two of Freud's daughters, Anna Freud (in 1965) and Mathilda (Hollitscher) Freud (1966), and one son, Oliver Freud (1966). Anna Freud granted him two interviews; the others appear to have seen him on only one occasion. He also interviewed Martin Freud's estranged wife, Esti, in the spring and summer of 1966. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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)     

Review of A child analysis with Anna Freud.

Reviews the book, A child analysis with Anna Freud by Peter Heller (see record 1990-97274-000). The tension between remembering and forgetting is the daily experience of the psychoanalyst. This takes place not only in the consulting room, but applies to our sense of ourselves and the history of psychoanalysis. Anna Freud died in October 1982. For almost 60 years she had been the heir apparent and then the leader of the international psychoanalytic movement. Yet, not even 10 years after her death, her name seems to have disappeared from psychoanalytic discourse and the contributions of her work and of child analysis to the body of psychoanalytic theory and technique are not discussed. As much as one can learn about the history of child analysis from this book, one must bear in mind the peculiar circumstances surrounding Peter Heller's analysis. Five of his classmates, including his future wife, and his teacher were also in analysis with Anna Freud. He vacationed with the Burlinghams and Anna Freud and wished to have Dorothy Burlingham as his mother. Peter's nanny later became a psychoanalyst and there was talk of Peter's father marrying Anna Freud. Given the multiplicity and complexity of these interrelationships, how could a termination have taken place? This book may be Peter Heller's continuation of his analysis, the exercise of his self-analytic function, and thus finally a termination of his child analysis with Anna Freud. In sharing his termination with us, Peter Heller gives us access to important aspects of our own history and so enables us to shape our future. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Laboratory Instrumentation in Psychology.

Reviews the book "Laboratory instrumentation in psychology," by William W. Grings (see record 1955-01753-000). It has been Grings's purpose to provide in convenient form a discussion of the basic characteristics of representative stimulating and recording systems, principally for use with human subjects. It is explicitly stated that the book is intended to be an introduction rather than an ultimate guide to research. The primary effort is to suggest by illustration the types of question that must be asked when apparatus is adopted to extend measurement and control. Altogether, the usefulness of the book far outweighs its limitations, and the advanced student or the teacher in laboratory courses will find it of considerable help in surveying the technical tools of the trade. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Freud's Discovery of Psychoanalysis: The Politics of Hysteria.

The reviewer states that there has been a long line of independent efforts to document and appraise Freud's life. William McGrath's book is a sign that professional historians have entered the field in strength and with a determination to link Feud's work to its social and cultural surroundings. Professor McGrath is especially interested in the period of the 1890s but explores whatever evidence is available about the intellectual origins of Freud's ideas. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The Development of Modern Behavioural Psychology.

Reviews the book, The Development of Modern Behavioural Psychology by John McLeish (1981). The title of McLeish's book contains two terms that may be somewhat misleading. Describing his efforts as encompassing the "Development" of ideas suggests that the approach is historical, while the term "Modern Behavioural Psychology" might be taken to mean almost anything depending upon one's restrictive use of the term. McLeish, as it turns out, attaches a very restrictive meaning to "Behavioural Psychology". There will probably always be argument about what constitutes a proper historical approach but the reviewer doubts that the tact McLeish takes will ever satisfy. In his review of the history of radical behaviourism, McLeish highlights the work of some writers who have not been given a prominent place by other historians, and discusses, or notes only in passing, authors who have ordinarily been considered prominent. As a history, then, McLeish's book is a disappointment and often annoying. Perhaps the best that can be said about this book is that McLeish hints at a form of behavioural theory which would expand the present boundaries of our thinking. In his enthusiastic advocacy of an account that would recognize the historical, social and cultural origins of human behaviour as well as its complexity (including language, thinking and consciousness), McLeish points to the biological rather than the physical (or mathematical) sciences as the source of appropriate models to develop a science of behaviour. In this he is to be congratulated. It is too bad he did not devote the book to a full development of these notions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of A History of Western Psychology.

Reviews the book, A History of Western Psychology by David J. Murray (1982). In two respects this is a highly traditional book. First of all, the parts of the subject that are singled out for serious consideration are the most venerable core areas of experimental psychology--above all, sensation, and to a slightly lesser extent, memory and other aspects of cognition. Social psychology gets less than 1% of the total space and such areas as developmental, applied and personality psychology are hardly glanced at. There is however a whole chapter on psychoanalysis. A second traditional feature of the book is expressed in its commitment to the view that the history of psychology is to be treated purely as intellectual history. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of From classical to contemporary psychoanalysis: A critique and integration.

Reviews the book, From classical to contemporary psychoanalysis: A critique and integration by Morris N. Eagle (see record 2010-09133-000). The entire contents of the current volume is conceptually organized, a veritable tour de force in its capacity to grab hold of a mass of sprawling, unruly theories, clinical data, and related research, and shape them into an easily digestible, overarching view of the current state of psychoanalysis. The book is divided between Freud’s theories and selected contemporary theories, and each of those two major sections consists of subsections on the nature of mind, object relations, psychopathology, and treatment, as seen from both the Freudian and the contemporary perspective. The third and last section of the book presents divergences and convergences between both camps, and among theories within each camp. It is hard to imagine any course taught in a psychoanalytic institute of any persuasion that would not derive immense benefit from the inclusion of related readings from this book. Most apparent in this volume is the clarity of Eagle’s thought and the deeply respectful attitude he brings to others’ work, even those he disagrees with. Eagle provides a cogent rationale for even the most arcane of Freud’s speculations regarding the functioning of the mental apparatus, including some unique insights such as the “ironic centrality of object relations” in that model. With equal clarity he lays out the contemporary critique of Freud’s work, especially his model of mind, a critique which proposes to substitute notions of experience as unformulated and indeterminate (e.g., Donnell Stern), the unconscious as consisting of veridical representations of early interactions (e.g., attachment theorists, Daniel Stern, Beebee and Lachman), and the mind as socially constructed (e.g., Stolorow, Mitchell). As these contemporary theorists have critiqued Freud’s model, Eagle provides an incisive critique of these newer models. However, I suspect that even the strict constructionists in each theoretical camp will appreciate Eagle’s efforts to present their theory in its best and most reasonable light. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Historical Roots of Contemporary Psychology.

Reviews the book, Historical Roots of Contemporary Psychology, edited by Benjamin B. Wolman (see record 1968-35019-000). This volume consists of 16 original essays divided into three general headings: Part One--Association, animal psychology, and conditioning; Part Two--Free association and psychoanalysis; and Part Three--Kant, personalism, and the cultural approach. The subject matter of the papers is primarily concerned with the nineteenth century and includes such names as Herbart, Sechenov, McDougall, Pavlov, James, Janet, Kant, Bretano, Wundt, Bradley, Ward, Stout, Stern, and Vygotskii. The reviewer notes a number of problems with this book: no uniformity in presentation; no explanation of why the particular topics or authors were chosen, or what the authors' qualifications are; no editing for spelling, punctuation, and grammar; and no effort to provide an adequate index. All of the criticisms aside, the reviewer notes that many of the individual papers are quite valuable, and thus recommends the papers, if not the book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Motivation and explanation: An essay on Freud's philosophy of science.

Reviews the book, Motivation and explanation: An essay on Freud's philosophy of science by Nigel Mackay (1989). The book under review is not only an essay on Freud's philosophy of science (as the subtitle has it) but more particularly, a determined attack on the "separate-domain" thesis. This thesis asserts that psychoanalysis belongs to "a domain of explanation separate from explanations of nonhuman phenomena." In refuting this claim, Mackay argues that psychoanalysis falls clearly within the domain of normal science and, by implication, deserves all the rights and privileges of other established disciplines. We hear the echo of Freud when he wrote that "I have always felt it as a gross injustice that people have refused to treat psycho-analysis like any other science." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Social Learning and Clinical Psychology.

Reviews the book "Social learning and clinical psychology," by Julian B. Rotter (see record 2005-06617-000). The stated purpose of this book is to arrive at a systematic theory from which may be drawn specific principles for actual clinical practice, and to illustrate some of the more important applications of the theory to the practice. The first three chapters represent for the most part a clear and incisive introduction to the major purpose of the book, chapters which can be read with profit by all clinical psychologists. The next four chapters, which represent the bulk of the book, contain the aims and concepts of Rotter's social learning position as well as the ways in which it differs from other approaches. Rotter's discussion and evaluation of psychoanalytic theory is amazingly superficial and, to the unwary graduate student, misleading. First, it represents one of the few attempts to formulate and apply a learning theory to clinical phenomena and problems-the more such courageous attempts we have, the better will we be able to evaluate the adequacy of such theories. Second, Rotter's formulations have generated a relatively large number of studies at The Ohio State University-a tribute not only to Rotter's effectiveness as a teacher but a reflection of the fruitfulness of the formulations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The Persistent Problems of Psychology.

Reviews the book, The Persistent Problems of Psychology by Robert B. MacLeod (see record 1976-25095-000). This book demonstrates the relevance of historical inquiry to the contemporary study of psychological issues. The exposition is direct enough to make this book an excellent introduction for those who are new to the history of psychology. The depth of MacLeod's scholarship makes this relevant and interesting reading for people already acquainted with the subject. The book is organized so as to elaborate on persistent substantive and methodological themes as they have emerged in successive historical periods. The persistent problems of psychology provides a sensitive and scholarly introduction to the history of psychology. More important, it gives an intellectual framework within which to think about historical and systematic psychological issues. Above all, MacLeod believed in dialogue and debate. This book is his invitation to reconsider and re-examine current fashionable conceptions of psychology against the views and perspectives of the past. This is most practical advice. The persistent problems of psychology transcend any particular manifestation. In the study of these past forms, we glimpse something of psychology's inevitable intellectual future. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)