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This compilation of selected papers, book reviews, and discussions from the writings of Hans Loewald during the past 30 years represents a major chronicle of that age of transition. In it is reflected progress in developmental and structural perspectives, the widening sphere of analytic applications, and always a deepening of historical and cultural awareness. No similar work known to us since Freud's has painstakingly tied together so many facets of analytic theory and practice and grounded them so consistently in the analytic situation—the instincts; the child-mother unity; the differentiation of the personality; perception; memory; the primary and secondary processes; transference and transference neuroses; preoedipal, oedipal, and postoedipal structures and their disorders; language; treatment as psychoanalytic processes in an interactional setting leading to the resumption of growth; etc. Not only does Loewald take positions with respect to such analytic figures as Freud, Jung, Hartmann, Winnicott, Mahler, Arlow, Brenner, Schur, and Kohut, but he situates himself in relation to figures of philosophy as well, especially Nietzsche.
Twenty-four chapters are presented—by no means all of Loewald's important papers. They are divided equally into two sections: "Concepts and Theory" and "The Psychoanalytic Process." However, as Loewald observes, "a sharp and lasting dichotomy between these two emphases is neither intended by me nor, to my mind, possible or fruitful" (p. vii). Themes appear in one article and are continued in another, years later. There is no simple way to follow this material according to chronology or sequence, and I shall be content if I can convey some systematic insight into its approach.
Actually, the first chapter in sequence, "Ego and Reality" (1951), is also the first in chronology and offers an excellent opportunity for a preliminary survey of Loewald's specific viewpoint and the immediate