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I was relatively philosophically naïve when I began this book, except for some familiarity with Sartre, Arendt, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Thomas Paine. After completing the book, I am now considerably more enlightened. What particularly appealed to me about this book was that Dr. Mills addresses unsolved clinical and psychological problems in psychoanalysis, especially regarding theory.
The book is written for intellectually driven psychoanalysts, who will enjoy seeing Dr. Mills persuasively argue against philosophers who had degraded diverse psychoanalytic theories. He uses philosophical arguments to support psychoanalytic theories and schools and shows how there is a falsity to “science” that is limited to so-called empirical objectivism.
If I were to summarize this entire book in one sentence, which is well-nigh impossible (a case in point!), I would say that the basis of Dr. Mills‘s treatise is the concept of dialectic. My way of conceptualizing this would be to utilize the idea of compromise formation, and others have referred to it as Dasein, or Being. Since the book is about 400 pages long, understandably, I will not be able to do justice to the complexity and richness of his writing. I will, however, attempt to point out what I see as the outstanding points on which he elaborates.
Mills uses the Prolegomenon: “Towards a Psychology of Existence” (pp. ix–xxi) to establish a template for the rest of the book. The issues are noted, and then in later chapters amplified. For many readers, this will suffice. For others, their interest will be piqued. Mills believes that
as a philosophy of mind and culture, psychoanalysis offers us a promising perspective to reengage our being in the world in meaningful ways that illuminate human existence, the mysteriousness of unconscious processes, our relation to transcendence, ethical obligations to social collectives and the wonder of logos for present day consciousness. (p. xi)
In the first chapter, “On the Psychic Origins of Realit