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Peter Rudnytsky's latest book is a gem, offering us his incisive scholarship on a broad range of fascinating topics. Although most of its nine chapters are previously published, it is valuable to have them more accessible here. The chapters range widely, from Shakespeare and Milton to Freud, Groddeck, Ferenczi, Severn, and Fromm. In discussing the neglected contributions of Georg Groddeck, Rudnytsky quotes his observation that “truth is always ambivalent, both sides are true” (p. 162). Rudnytsky adds, with respect to Groddeck and Freud, that “what is required is a genuinely dialectical perspective that synthesizes” them both (p. 162). We always benefit from a dialectical synthesis of multiple perspectives, though, sadly, too often we lapse instead into unproductive debates involving false binaries.
Rudnytsky locates his “belated discovery” of the works of Erich Fromm as central to this book (p. 1). He credits Adrienne Harris with galvanizing his interest in Fromm—specifically, Fromm's critique of authoritarianism. He uses that critique to launch some trenchant attacks on the Orwellian Donald Trump, who, he contends, “thinks the opposite of what is true” (p. 98), thus trying to foist doublethink on our country. Rudnytsky's adulation of Fromm may lead him to overemphasize Freud's authoritarian tendencies, as the author occasionally lapses into the rhetoric of debate, which is poorly suited to coping with complexity. Ironically, he sometimes reduces Freud to a cardboard character who “resemble[s]
Milton's God … in his fondness for dichotomies” (p. 59), not giving Freud credit for his dialectical thinking, which synthesizes conflicting forces. After all, Freud introduced the crucial concept of a “complemental series” to integrate the interactions of multiple causal factors.
Rudnytsky is not only a clinical psychoanalyst but also a respected English professor, and his recommendation that literary criticism should be based on “reading … with a minimum of preconceptions”