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The nature of psychoanalytic training and practice promotes a paradox which sometimes misleads psychoanalysts themselves, and usually makes confusion amongst our critics even worse. For though the discipline is severe if it is loyally adhered to, it enhances the unique qualities of the individual to a point where non-analysts at least wonder in what way such a diversity of views can be seen to cohere; I have had a better opportunity than most of appreciating the reality of the paradox.
One unfortunate result for members of the psychoanalytic movement is the impossibility of keeping up with – or even being aware of – the contributions which psychoanalysts are making in fields outside the narrow domain of psychoanalytic practice, training, and research.
Sometimes a number of psychoanalysts are engaged on work which enables them to make a contribution to some aspect of society not usually illuminated by psychoanalytic insight. This has occurred in the book under review, Sexual Behavior and the Law. It is therefore with some interest that one looks to see what the diversity of the individual analyst – together with the background that he shares with his fellow analysts – will lead him to put forward to society as his uniquely analytic contribution. From this we may learn something of an aspect of psychoanalysis with which we are unfamiliar, and something of the image of psychoanalysis with which our colleagues are presenting the public.
It would be helpful to give some idea of other contributions to this book, but this unfortunately I feel unable to do. As psychoanalysts we sometimes complain that our views are misrepresented by those who mistake familiarity with the words we use, for familiarity with
the ideas we try to express by use of the words. I shall avoid this error by not criticizing contributions made by masters in their own field – their views can best be understood by those familiar with the field.
In this volume one expects to find that the contributions by