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In recent decades, critics of psychoanalysis have pointed to the guild's general disregard for empirical investigations of the theory's fundamental tenets. While these diatribes bear a likeness to practitioners who consider psychoanalysis too complex to be examined through reductionistic empirical methods, notable exceptions include the brilliant contributions of Eric Kandel, Robert Wallerstein, Sidney Blatt, Lester Luborsky, and Otto Kernberg. With the long-awaited publication of this book, we can now formally add Robert R. Holt to the list of foundational psychoanalytic theorists who not only develop and critique the theories of psychoanalysis, but who distill core principles into measurable, testable hypotheses.
Those who studied with Holt at New York University's Research Center for Mental Health (including Morris Eagle, Leo Goldberger, Nancy Goldberger, Fred Pine, Donald Spence, Paul Wachtel, Hartvig Dahl, Merton M. Gill, and Robert J. Langs) are intimately aware of the scope of his psychoanalytic research into areas of subliminal influences on cognition, measuring primary process, studying cognitive styles, sensory deprivation, and dreaming, Others may be familiar with Holt's earlier works, including Freud Reappraised (1989) and fourteen other books or edited volumes, while still others may know of his humanitarian efforts as the founding director of the Program on Peace and Global Policy Studies at NYU. In this two-volume set (Volume 1 presents in three chapters the theoretical basis of primary process ideation; Volume 2, a CD-ROM containing eighteen chapters, includes an exhaustive scoring manual, research review, and normative database), Holt develops not only a comprehensive theory of mental operations but a system for analyzing their products using his concepts of primary process.
Primary Process Thinking: Theory, Measurement, and Research is the culmination of over fifty years of diligent work by Holt and his group.