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The editors of Rivista di Psicoanalisi and Karnac Books are to be congratulated for the first issue of their Psychoanalytic issues Monograph Series. Writing in Psychoanalysis is a handy and still comprehensive volume. In about 130 pages eight essays cover a broad spectrum on the writing of psychoanalysis. The art of writing, its value and its abuse, is elucidated from the perspective of the different actors in the production of a published text, from author to editorial reader and editor. While Writing in Psychoanalysis may be especially valuable for the young psychoanalyst who is in the beginning of a career as a psychoanalytic writer, it also presents ideas and points of view deserving the attention of all those who are concerned with the editing and publication of psychoanalytic journals. The richness of perspectives and a consistent reader-friendly style also make this book worthy of being recommended to any and all readers who want to get more out of their reading.
John Gedo, assuming himself to have published more pages than any other now living psychoanalyst, opens the book with a chapter containing some very steadfast advice for the writer in spe: “For decades I read most of the principal journals (in English) from cover to cover, as soon as they appeared. I did not find most of this material particularly valuable qua contributions to psychoanalysis, but thinking through why this was so, in particular in terms of the way the papers were organised, was enormously instructive”. “The value of these exercises was soon validated by my experience as a reader of manuscripts submitted for publication to various journals….” Gedo's contribution suggests that also he who has the gift of original thinking has much to learn on how to organise its presentation.
Patrick Mahony, well-known author of a number of books on his close and intriguing reading of Freud's texts, demonstrates in the second essay with characteristic care and scholarship how Freud's so called self-analys