The core of Arnold Goldberg's new book is his concern with what he views as the two most prevalent “misunderstandings” in current psychoanalytic discourse. The first is the attempt to reduce it to neurobiology; the second is the attempt to reduce psychoanalysis to the study of social relationships. Discussion of these, and other, “misunderstandings” leads the author toward his own preferred understanding of both the nature and the boundaries of the psychoanalytic endeavor. This is subsumed under the rubric of psychoanalysis as the in-depth study of understanding and misunderstanding, especially as it pertains to unconscious mental life. The movement from understanding to misunderstanding to interpretation and finally to new understanding is the hermeneutic circle, the study of which is a second theme of this book.