You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
AN INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOANALYTIC RESEARCH. By Kenneth Mark Colby. New York: Basic Books, 1960, ix + 88 pp., $3.00.
The author points to the necessity of using "appropriate scientific methods" to demonstrate which of the psychoanalytic hypotheses derived from clinical experiences are empirically justified. To this end, new hypotheses, the discovery of "crucial regularities" and their measurement, are necessary to formulate explanatory principles of human behavior. Regarding mensuration, the branches of mathematics indispensable for physics are unsuitable for psychoanalytic research, but other branches, such as probability theory, nonparametric statistics, set theory, and new forms of algebra are applicable. The analystic situation offers an opportunity to study in intensified form the effects that individuals have on each other, "to discover the patterns of such effects and isolate and refine the variables responsible" and thus "to increase our control over them."
PSYCHOANALYTIC CONCEPTS OF DEPRESSION. By Myer Mendelson. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C Thomas, 1960, xii + 170 pp., $6.50.
Following a survey of preanalytic writings on depression, the author presents a chronological account of the work of Freud, Abraham, Rado, Melanie Klein, Edward Bibring, Gero, Edith Jacobson, Mabel B. Cohen, Spitz, and other psychoanalytic authors in this field. He then discusses problems such as the role of constitutional and psychological predisposing factors, the relation of a central anxiety situation in development of depression, the roles of aggression, orality, introjection, and obsessional elements, depressive reactions, and therapy. In a final evaluative chapter, he points to the persistence of numerous areas of disagreement concerning the universality of certain clinical features in depressed patients and those concerning the dynamic features of this syndrome. He is dissatisfied with the "frequently inadequate case material." He calls for "a more widespread awarenes