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The Purloined Self by Edgar A. Levenson, M.D. New York: Contemporary Psychoanalysis Books, 266 pgs.
THE PURLOINED SELF REPRESENTS the heart of the work of Edgar Levenson, from the early 1970s to 1990. Most appeared originally in this journal, the home of interpersonal psychoanalysis and of Levenson. Some readers may be disappointed that there is no new writing here, but the opportunity to have the author's major work under one cover should compensate.
Levenson's papers are the right stuff to launch this new psychoanalytic publishing venture. He is the leading interpersonal psychoanalytic thinker of our era, the late 1960s to the present. This should not mask his stature in the broader span of psychoanalysis (see Hoffman, 1983).
Levenson is a brilliant writer; provocative, witty and engaging. It is difficult to remain neutral to his work for he is always challenging generally accepted notions, including those associated with interpersonal psychoanalytic lore. His contributions to interpersonal psychoanalysis rank with those of Harry Stack Sullivan, Erich Fromm, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and Clara Thompson. Among contemporary interpersonal writers, only Benjamin Wolstein's work can compare in volume and significance.
Though one can hear echoes of each of Levenson's forebears in his voice, Clara Thompson's is the loudest. He does not share Sullivan's and Fromm-Reichmann's interest in analytic work with seriously disturbed patients, nor does he evidence Fromm's interest in integrating psychoanalysis and social thought. Like Thompson, his interest lies primarily in the analytic process itself.
Levenson, along with the late Heinrich Racker, is probably psychoanalysis's foremost observer of that process. Stripping the analytic