Way Beyond Freud: Postmodern Psychoanalysis Observed Edited by Joseph Reppen, Jane Tucker, and Martin A. Schulman London:  Open Gate Press, 2004,  301 pp.

This volume is a collection of different points of view on the role of psychoanalysis in contemporary humanities, presenting a wide range of applications of Freud's ideas in many disciplines: “[Contributions to this volume include chapters that are clinical, empirical, philosophical, historical, developmental, and theoretical” (p.). I can add that there are also epidemiological (Bornstein), neuro-imaging (Bornstein), biological (Pincus), neurological (Pincus), self-psychological (Meissner), hermeneutic (Summers), psychotherapeutic (Miller), phenomenological (Thompson), feminist (Silverman), and spiritual-existential (Barratt) perspectives on Freud's ideas that look unusual and promising. The papers are published in a consistent order, from biologically orientated articles to philosophical ones. The volume attempts to offer many varied points of view; however, unfortunately, almost no single author presents a psychoanalytic perspective on the way beyond Freud.

“Beyond” means a further way of theoretical and practical development, discussion, criticism, and deconstruction of the original Freudian model. But the authors do not understand, analyze, or go beyond (or change) Freud's way; they simply reject “a segment of Freudian psychoanalysis usually termed the ‘classical model’” (p. v). In addition, it seems that they also ignore all post-Freudian psychoanalytic experience and reject contemporary psychoanalysis completely. Therefore, the title does not describe the content, because first, the authors' analyses of post-Freudian ideas focus on some of the contemporary ideas of “American psychoanalysis” and do not consider other international ideas. Most of the contributors here seem to have regressed from Freudian ideas to the pre-analytic psychological conception of person, ego, and intersubjective relations, and even to scientific biological and neurological discourses, which have nothing in common with Freud's invention. In addition, the book does not reflect its title