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There are a number of introductory textbooks on psychoanalysis in the marketplace. Among the earliest, Freud's A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis and New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis and Brenner's An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis come to mind. In some respects, these early authors faced a less challenging task in writing a definitive textbook on psychoanalysis than have their successors, insofar as the field, theoretical challenges from dissidents notwithstanding, could still be presented as offering a unified theory of the mind and how it works. Such a monolithic view of psychoanalysis no longer exists, and more recent authors have had to contend with a growing theoretical pluralism in psychoanalysis, as well as with findings from neuropsychology, cognitive science, empirical psychoanalytic research, and psychotherapy process and outcome studies. Today, any book that seeks to be considered a definitive textbook on the subject of psychoanalysis cannot ignore findings from these intersecting fields, and this makes writing such a book a remarkable challenge.
A number of books are self-identified as textbooks, such as a series of excellent volumes written by Glen Gabbard, including Gabbard, Litowitz, and Williams's Textbook of Psychoanalysis, now in its second edition (2011). Other books are adopted as textbooks owing to their clarity for educators and students. In 1994 Nancy McWilliams published the now widely popular Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, which made its way onto the syllabus of numerous introductory courses in psychotherapy. To this list we can add Elizabeth Auchincloss's The Psychoanalytic Model of the