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This book examines three overlapping areas of the psychoanalytic tradition: the history of psychoanalysis; psychoanalytic cultural criticism; and the application of psychoanalytic methods to the study of history. The author is well placed to comment in these areas as he was trained firstly as a cultural historian and later as a psychoanalyst, at the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute. The book touches on the complex history of the psychoanalytic movement and its interaction with the wider context of European cultural and political history.
The first part of the book deals with historical aspects of the psychoanalytic tradition. In the first chapter, the author attempts to capture the flavour and style of Lacan's return to Freud although, as he admits, he is ambivalent about Lacan. He notes Lacan's critique of ego-psychology and social adaptation. He accepts also our inevitable decentring and alienation in language but omits to mention Lacan's central interest in the death instinct, as it relates to desire beyond demand. Instead, he emphasises Lacan's associations with dissidents, with May '68, his ‘arrogance, conceit and theoretical megalomania’ (p. 16), his role as prophet, leader, heavy-handed autocrat, his controversial short sessions and the self-authorisation of analysts. But he makes an error when he suggests that (p. 20 - italics mine):