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By Otto Kernberg. New York: Aronson, 1975, 361 pp., $25.00.
OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY AND CLINICAL PSYCHOANALYSIS. By Otto Kernberg. New York: Aronson, 1976, 299 pp., $25.00.
In the ubiquitous appearance of secondary revision as related to the dream work we see a universal aspect of our need to try to create a unified gestalt out of disparate and possibly unrelated manifest dream elements. It is also in the nature of our daily work as analysts that we are ever alert for underlying themes and dynamics in the loosely related free associative material of our patients. Some of us tolerate ambiguity better than others, and at times all of us must tolerate it because we simply lack the data or the necessary synthetic powers to achieve the desired unification. Those fortunate enough to possess the talent for integrative clarity are able to provide major theoretical and clinical insights to the rest of us.
One cannot read Otto Kernberg's two books without recognizing one is in the presence of a very fine intellect who has sifted an enormous quantity of clinical and theoretical material. There must also be a tremendous need for integration and certainty powering this drive not only to organize a very complex constellation of clinical manifestations such as are reflected in the borderline conditions and narcissism, but then to take on the even broader and more difficult chore of unifying them under the umbrella of an object relations theory.
I shall attempt to summarize this herculean effort and, if possible, to objectively evaluate the overall result in terms of its positive achievements as well as areas that may be open to question or even disagreement.
To start with, there would seem to be formal aspects of these books and their organization that might detract from their readability or literary merits which are yet quite secondary to the scientific value