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Theodore Reik (1949) opined that all love begins in envy. The lover recognizes something in the beloved that is out of the lover's reach and seeks to share vicariously in that which is envied through the loving attachment to that beloved other. He recognized that there is the ever-present danger that such beneficent envy can turn into hateful and toxic envy. A journal reviewer, one who reads someone else's labor which has occupied that Other for months or years, is in a position where either type of envy may dominate. In rare circumstances, the book review editor has let a not-very-rich book into the cue which is worthy of only criticism; that is not a common occurrence. Most often, the reviewer meets the words of another worker in the same field who has thought deep-and-hard about their subject and has gone through the many crucibles and more sundry hurdles of the publishing process and come out the other end with something of great value. The reviewer, then, has the opportunity, so to speak, to get into a beautifully crafted boat, fashioned by the shipwright and the honor to row with that author, even if just a little bit.
Peter Fonagy writes (p. x) in his Forward to Robert Drozek's work that he brought it with him on holiday anticipating a “light-hearted journey through the ethical complexities of psychoanalysis,” but warmly admits that he “was not anticipating one of the most rigorous and scholarly explorations of the process of therapeutic change in the insight-oriented therapeutic endeavors.” My experience was homologous to Fonagy's. Before finishing the first several chapters of Drozek's gem, I found myself - after having written many dozens of reviews and for the very first time - wishing that I had authored this book. I remain happily in this state of beneficent envy for an author I'd never heard of prior to opening this paperback. What a lovely experience! In my own writings, I had struggled to align clinical technique and practice with psychoanalytic theor