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This volume is representative of a spectrum of approaches that characterize the effort to apply psychoanalysis outside of its fundamental clinical context. Each of the contributions reflects its authors' unique
view of the relation between psychoanalytic theory, method, and the interpretation of data. There is vast diversity here, to the extent that there appears to be some justice in thinking of "Applied Psychoanalysis" as a collection of informed but idiosyncratic efforts, rather than as a coherent discipline.
This collection is divided into sections titled Anthropology, Religion, Mythology, Literature, Political Science, and finally the report of a Panel Discussion on Psychoanalysis, Folklore, and Socialization Processes. Each section is devoted to an area of content or a discipline to which psychoanalysis in some manner has been applied as an interpretive source. The contributors also come from a range of disciplines, including psychoanalysis. Each has chosen a subject from within his own field, to which psychoanalytic theory is then applied. Since the nature of how this is accomplished varies so widely from chapter to chapter, and limitations of space do not permit a full review of all sixteen papers, I have selected a few which permit some discussion of the relevant issues.
Perhaps the most outstanding issue in the kind of work represented here is that of distance from the kind of inference that is characteristic of psychoanalytic clinical practice. Unlike clinical work, in which criteria for understanding and interpretation are (comparatively speaking) relatively clear-cut, in applied analysis there is a continuum in the degree or extent of leaps of inference that different authors permit. As a result, there is a corresponding range in the degree of conviction that different interpretations about these non-clinical data will offer.
Other issues that stand out in the consideration of such material are those which are also familiar in the clinical contex