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Steven Ellman here offers an important and useful contribution to the literature of comparative psychoanalysis, and this book will be of value to the faculties and candidates of our institutes, as well as to psychoanalytic clinicians. Students of the historical development of psychoanalytic ideas will be indebted to him. Beginning with Freud, Ellman has undertaken the daunting task of summarizing and comparing the major ideas of a group of the eleven psychoanalytic pioneers who in his opinion have made the most important contributions to the advance of psychoanalysis, with special emphasis on the theory of object relations.
The book is divided into three sections: Freud (pp. 1-166); Major Post-Freudian Theorists (pp. 167-540); Contemporary Issues in Psychoanalysis (pp. 559-652.). One of Ellman's laudable goals is to demonstrate “that each position has a great deal to offer and can provide complementary viewpoints” (p. 414). He usefully argues against our chronic tendency to bifurcations and dichotomous thinking.
Ellman's pantheon includes Sigmund and Anna Freud, Heinz Hartmann, Melanie Klein (allotted the most space after Sigmund Freud), Fairbairn, Winnicott, Sullivan, Mahler, Kohut, Kernberg, and Bion. Section 2 concludes with chapter 16, by Arnold Richards and Arthur Lynch, whom Ellman has deputized to provide an historical overview of ego psychology and contemporary conflict theory. In two other chapters Ellman has invited others to collaborate with him: chapter 12, in which Anni Bergman joins him in an essay on Mahler, and chapter 14, in which Monica Karsky joins him in discussing the work of Kernberg.
I expect this book will serve as a widely used text and compendium for use in seminars on comparative psychoanalysis. But it is far more than that: the author has contributed thoughtful discussions about these contributors and expressed his own views on their various disagreements.