You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
With the lion's share of copies of the Dream Book still on the publisher's shelf, Freud was moved to write popular works for the lay public, notably the much lighter works on wit and parapraxes and, later, the two-part Introductory Lectures. Many since have tried to make the flavor of the psychoanalytic process accessible to the interested public.
Elio Frattaroli's work stands in this tradition but is unique in the beauty of its writing and in its cogent integration of a theory of treatment with models for the good life and for consciousness. Healing the Soul is further distinguished by its rich case material, including a demonstration of countertransference struggles; a closing section discusses the transference-like struggles that may arise in giving life to a volume such as this. Frattaroli, after presenting an original analysis of Freud's battle to transcend materialist/positivist thinking, offers a solution to Freud's dilemma by (1) tying Waelder's theory of multiple function to Bohr's theory of complementarity and (2) highlighting the distinction between Freud's early libido model and the later and more encompassing Eros model. In the clinical centerpiece of this work (the treatment of Mary), Frattaroli demonstrates how an analytic relationship comes into being as an interweaving of the processes and processing of both members of the dyad and their separate but resonating feeling states. Here he invokes Bohr's discussion of the ubiquitous presence of the scientist in the structure and conclusions of all scientific experiments. Overall, this volume is a feast for the reader; it aligns analysis with various trends in contemporary scientific thought and assumes a comfortable middle ground between one- and two-person psychologies.
Frattaroli's intention, beyond providing a scientific basis for analysis that is neither mechanistic nor materialist, is to insist on the value, for analyst and analysand alike, of embracing the conflicts of life. These are seen to arise,