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In this volume John Gedo undertakes an ambitious project. He sets out to trace the intellectual history of psychoanalysis between 1973 and 1998 by reviewing the sixty most influential books of that era. The author, former book review editor of this journal and prolific contributor to the field, is ideally suited to take on such a challenge. Nevertheless, when I read in the introduction to the volume that the author planned to “present reviews of the sixty featured monographs, arranged topic by topic, forming an annotated bibliography of the core psychoanalytic contributions of the past generation” (p. xiii), I experienced a sinking feeling. Would this be a tedious and plodding journey through a series of sequential book reviews masquerading as a coherent book?
To my great delight, my fears proved unfounded. Gedo does not really “review” the books—rather, he engages their authors' ideas. He succinctly summarizes the key points made by the contributors he selects, usually in an evenhanded way, and places their thinking in the context of the entire field. He also provides critiques of these ideas from his own perspective, the bias of which he readily acknowledges. He gives credit long overdue to writers as diverse as Herbert Rosenfeld and Benjamin Rubenstein, both of whom are neglected by American analysts. He provides a masterful yet succinct critique of current French psychoanalysis. He is respectful and admiring of Paul Gray's work, while stressing that the technique it advances is limited to a narrow spectrum of patients. He warns repeatedly of the perils of divorcing psychoanalytic theories from the data of the neurosciences.
After his erudite survey, he provides a brief concluding chapter in which he points out the thematic threads in current psychoanalytic discourse. He emphasizes the need to avoid Cartesian dualism and to make use of empirical evidence from extraclinical sources, as well as from the consulting room. He ends with a clarion call to link the theory