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André Haynal is a Swiss psychoanalyst of Hungarian origin who has written extensively about the intellectual history of psychoanalysis and its epistemology. Under his aegis, the Bálint Archive has been established at the University of Geneva, so he deserves much of the credit for the ongoing publication of the basic documentation of the Freud-Ferenczi collaboration. At the same time, Haynal is one of the leaders shepherding psychoanalysis into the “postmodern” world: at
once an ecumenicist, a progressive, an intellectual preservationist, and a partisan of the Budapest school. I should probably add that, if push came to shove, I might describe myself in the same terms.
The volume under review is a collection of Haynal's essays on the scientific status of contemporary psychoanalysis and on the historical circumstances that determined the course of the Freudian enterprise. Earlier versions of some chapters were written for specific occasions; although Haynal has clearly tried to produce a coherent book, he has been unable to avoid some repetitiveness as well as some disjunctiveness in terms of subject matter. Elizabeth Holder's translation from the French is generally felicitous: the book is gracefully written and easy to follow, so few readers will be bothered by the fact that it is not a monograph. Haynal himself acknowledges that the epistemological and historical sections of the book lack a unifying focus.
From an American vantage point, what distinguishes Haynal's work is its placement within the internal discourse of French psychoanalysis. His viewpoint is of particular interest because, in almost every respect, Haynal takes an anti-Lacanian position. However, aside from Freud and Ferenczi, most of his references are to francophone authors, and Americans are notably underrepresented in his bibliography. (This is especially striking because many Americans he cites, like Sylvan Tomkins or Howard Gardner, are not psychoanalysts but contributors to cognate fields.)