The Evolution of Psychoanalysis: Contemporary Theory and Practice

Abstract

JOHN E. GEDO: The Evolution of Psychoanalysis: Contemporary Theory and Practice, Other Press, New York, 1999, 262 pp., $25.00 (pbk), ISBN 1-892746-27-1. This interesting and controversial book is in an unusual format. What Dr. Gedo has done here is to review briefly sixty books that have come out over the past twenty-three years that he considers in order to acquaint the reader with recent developments in psychoanalysis and as a way of supporting his convictions. In the introduction, he summarizes his own point of view, which basically maintains that psychoanalysis is a natural science and therefore must be based on, and consistent with, current findings from the neurosciences. This, he says, rules out Freud's metapsychology entirely He works clinically with a hierarchical view of mental functions and considers the concept of self-organization central. For Gedo, psychoanalytic treatment attempts to correct dyspraxic patterns of behavior and to fill in apraxic deficits (p. xi). He believes that we must go beyond interpretation in psychoanalysis and rests his work heavily on what he describes as known about the biology of the mind. Gedo has elaborated on all these themes in his many previous publications, and does not dwell on his own views in as great a detail here. Most of the books summarized by Gedo are indeed significant, and I have reviewed many of them myself in various journals. So, as usual, Gedo is au courant in the field of psychoanalysis. His book is attractively printed, and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in current issues in psychoanalytic theory and practice. The reviews are quite brief and condensed, and the beginner may have some difficulty in following them, but nothing prevents that beginner from going back to any original text Gedo is summarizing. The central issue of the book is stated in one of the two summary chapters at the end. Gedo argues that the evolution of psychoanalysis can either be conceived of as the story of a discipline breaking up into irreconcilable fragments, or as the emergence of a new paradigm that transcends the disputed theories of an earlier time. This new paradigm, he repeatedly insists, is a biological or natural-science view of psychoanalysis in which all descriptions and discussions of mental functions must take into account the somatic substrate and what is known about it. Otherwise, one is forced into what Gedo calls a rationalist or a mentalist view, in which various theories conflict and are not capable of being tested and weighed. He often calls this latter stance the hermeneutic viewpoint, and there is considerable polemic in the book against it. He concludes, evidence from the cognate disciplines has invalidated all previous psychoanalytic hypotheses about early childhood on the grounds that these have been excessively adultomorphic, and pathomorphic (p. …