Mind and Destiny: A Social Approach to Psychoanalytic Theory.

Abstract

In 14 chapters (254 pages), a psychoanalyst and a social worker, both on the faculty of Syracuse University, have produced a book that might be entitled<i>Psychoanalysis for the People</i>. Written in a free-flowing journalistic style, the book contains clinical observations, theoretical notions, and personal comments interwoven with literary quotations and allusions. By avoiding scientific austerity, authoritarian dogmatism, and "how-to-do-it" practical instructions the authors have taken the forbidding quality out of a serious subject; but perhaps they have gone overboard in the other direction. For example, a subject commonly entitled "latency and adolescence" is introduced as "Youth is hot and bold." It may be, however, that such a device is almost unavoidable if the authors wish to impart psychoanalytic theory in class and seminar presentations to graduate students who have not had any practical experience with patients. What the reviewer takes exception to is the notion that there exists