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As a younger colleague writing about a book by someone much my senior, I will try my best to find a balance, in the tone of this review, between two ethical visions of psychoanalysis (Strenger, 1989)-the “classic” ethics of honoring older colleagues and generational boundaries, hence, being more humble, and the “romantic” ethics of greater interpersonal equality and authenticity, hence, being more open. The review can focus on the content of the written material or on the form. Since the content seems so interesting to me, I would like to make an emphasis on the content and describe it in as much detail as possible.
The book opens with an elucidation of the developmental importance of the curiosity. The idea is presented that curiosity or what the author also calls “the K-drive” (in the tradition of Bion, where K represents Knowledge), leads to the development of a conscious mind; in fact the author asserts that “without curiosity there would be no conscious mind” (p. 2). What follows is a nuanced and complex study of curiosity in each small detail of this turbulent process. Combining the Kleinian and Bionian ways of thinking, the author shows how K-drive “activates” the necessary developmental steps, showing the gradual Kleinian progression from PS to D (paranoid-schizoid position, and the depressive position respectively) and its intersections with the Bionian alpha function (with the idea that alpha function is the function of the K-drive - of processing raw beta elements into refined alpha elements). In a related vein, Stokoe emphasizes that the K-drive is crucial for the advancement from pleasure principle to reality principle or from PS to D.
The book proceeds with a historical excursion into the Freud's (1915) initial theory of drives, where he proposed the instincts of sexuality and self-preservation but eventually concluded (Freud, 1920) with the idea that there are two instincts-the life instinct and the death instinct. Afterward, both could be renamed as lo