Book Notices

THE DISCOVERY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS: THE HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF DYNAMIC PSYCHIATRY. By Henri F. Ellenberger. New York: Basic Books, 1970, 932 pp., $15.00.

Professor Ellenberger's book relates the history of the rise of the psychological approach to the understanding and treatment of psychiatric disturbances, giving equal emphasis to the work of Janet, Freud, Adler, and Jung. A background survey of the psychotherapeutic systems of primitive medicine, those of the philosophical schools of antiquity, and that of Christian religious healing is followed by an account of the pioneering efforts of Mesmer and Puységur. Psychotherapy fell into disrepute during the Positivist 19th century but its tradition was revived by Liébeault and Bernheim at Nancy and by Charcot in Paris. This "First Dynamic Psychiatry" was centered on hypnotism. Ellenberger reviews the social, politico-economic, and cultural conditions of this era which are usually designated as Romanticism. The work of Fechner and Bachofen is the most characteristic manifestation of this movement within psychology.

The "New Dynamic Psychiatry" arose at the inception of the modern era, and its intellectual founder was Nietzsche. In presenting an account of the lives and backgrounds of the four protagonists of the new psychiatry, Ellenberger appraises their personalities, compares them with some of their principal contemporaries, outlines the intellectual content of their oeuvres, and estimates the sources of their ideas and their subsequent influence.

Psychoanalysts may be most interested in Ellenberger's 153-page essay on Freud which utilizes information brought to light since publication of the Jones biography and calls into question certain accepted assumptions about Freud. The author's most original interpretation is that of Freud's neurotic symptoms as a "creative illness" from which he emerged, through his self-analysis, as a wise man and a hero. Another novel idea is that the psychoanalytic movement const