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IN THIS "clinical sequel" to his Personality Structure and Human Interaction, Dr. Guntrip rounds out his psychodynamic theory, in which the ideas of Fairbairn and Winnicott are closely interwoven with his own, illustrates it richly with well-chosen clinical material, and spells out in persuasive detail its implications for psychotherapy. The scope of the book is immense, ranging as it does from issues philosophical, scientific, and psychological to matters clinical, personal, and anecdotal. Stylistically, too, it is a compelling book, notable for its clarity of presentation and its highly versatile combination of solid scholarliness, narrative adeptness and near-poetic rendering of the quality of human experience.
The author presents a conception of human nature which necessitates what he calls a "reorientation" to the understanding and treatment of psychopathology. It is, however, closer to a revolution. Although he writes as a direct intellectual descendent of Freud, he has overthrown the classical structural and instinct theories for an "object-relations" or interpersonal one in which "the fundamental fact about human nature is our libidinal drives toward good object relations" and "impulses are not psychic entities, but reactions of an ego to objects." He has also rejected traditional assumptions about psychic energy and has made sweeping changes in the developmental and adaptive points of view. Ego, for Guntrip, is synonomous with "person" or perhaps "personality;" it is originally unitary, but parts of it split off in the face of fears generated by unsatisfying or destructive experiences with other people (bad-object situations). "Libidinal" simply refers to man's inherent object-seeking tendency; and aggression, far from being a basic instinct, is the reaction to frustration of the need for life-promoting relatedness. Like Sullivan, then, he views the human animal as essentially social, and the self as an interpersonal phenomenon.