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By John Frosch. New York: Int. Univ. Press, 1983, XIII + 521 pp., $40.00.
In spite of Freud's recorded distaste for treating psychotic patients and the associated therapeutic pessimism inherent in his stressing the improbability of effecting a workable transference in the narcissistic neuroses, analysts have always shown an interest in unraveling the mysteries of the psychoses and tilting a lance at this therapeutic windmill. In recent years, important contributions have come from child analysts, like Mahler, on the one hand, and from investigators working with adult psychotics, on the other. Both groups have benefited from our pushing back the developmental frontiers through infant observations that have heightened our understanding of both early normal, and pathological development. John Frosch is among those who approached this study from a professional lifetime interest in the dynamics and therapy of primarily adult psychotic patients.
Encyclopedic though this book may be in covering the psychoses (there are some 18 pages of references), it is much more than merely a survey of the vast literature or an eclectic harvest of the views of others. In a scholarly fashion, yet peppered tastefully with a unique wit and humor, Frosch has attempted to make some sense of the divers psychoanalytic contributions to this data from their origins in Freud's own changing theories to the variations and opposing ideas espoused by other workers. This required some preliminary work before Frosch could even compare the above with the distillate of his own formulations. He was faced with a need to redefine terms such as ego and self, which cover a multitude of meanings, which in turn have been confused by metapsychological changes. Many terms that each of us takes for granted have been reexamined and redefined in keeping with his special and unified view.