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This is an important book, presenting novel observations and theorizing. Although clearly and simply written, I read it twice to grasp the full depth of its significance and implications.
Crayton Rowe draws attention to the vicissitudes of the belief that there is something more to experience, something unknown and unexpected beyond present circumstances. He shows how the striving to keep alive this expectation is inherent in many forms of psychopathology, including addictions, suicidal preoccupations and excessive investment in fantasy. Such continual searching for the unknown may be vital to a person's sense of meaning and their capacity to tolerate an otherwise miserable life.
For many years I have held the view that Heinz Kohut was the most original and creative psychoanalyst since Freud (Mollon 2001). Although his work enjoyed some popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, some of his most crucial and subtle insights have been obscured by later relational and intersubjective trends within American psychoanalysis. Crayton Rowe is one of the few faithful toilers continuing to mine the rich clinical seam that Kohut uncovered - the hidden constellations of psychological functions that are needed to maintain a cohesive self-structure.
For those readers unfamiliar with Kohut's writings, a brief summary of some elements of his novel and subtle theorizing may be helpful. In his groundbreaking book, The Analysis of the Self, Kohut (1971) described various novel clinical observations. He outlined certain common, but hitherto undocumented, transference-like constellations. In one of these, the mirror transference, the patient would appear calmly held together and soothed so long as the analyst's empathic attunement was sustained, but would become markedly disturbed when this was disrupted. The patient's disturbance might take the form of becoming hostile, aloof, grandiose, somewhat paranoid, hypochondriacal, displaying psychotic trends, and so forth - reactions that could seem alar