Donald Carveth has presented us with a book that, arguably, is among the most ambitious written by a Canadian analyst. It is, first, an incisive critique of persisting authoritarian tendencies in psychoanalytic institutions. It is also a strong statement against the “echo chamber” effect in which devotees of a particular conceptualization of psychoanalysis primarily speak to and listen to like-minded devotees. It is certainly a radical and convincing revision of the Freudian superego, repeating the arguments Carveth previously advanced in The Still Small Voice: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Guilt and Conscience, in favour of amending Freud's structural theory by adding conscience and ego-ideal as independent structures to id, ego, and superego. Perhaps most useful for many readers, it is also a critical comparative review of the major post-Freudian paradigms of theory and practice.

The book begins with a thoughtful and laudatory foreword by Charles Levin and Carveth's own 25-page-long essay “On Critique.” Next come ten