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This little book was originally published in 1947. An English version, which was described as the second edition, appeared in America in 1949. The present, German, 'second edition' does not differ materially from the English version, but omits a useful preface which described where the author stands in relation to Freud, Jung, Heidegger, and Ludwig Binswanger. He has been much influenced in turn by all these, but the present book is written consistently from the point of view of 'existential analysis' (Daseinsanalyse). It constitutes a criticism of both the psycho-analytic and the 'anthropological' theories of the perversions and an attempt at a better understanding of these conditions by adopting the existentialist point of view. Beginning with a brief review and criticism of the former two theories, the author proceeds to the main body of his book, where he expounds his own theory. Very commendably, he does this by constant reference to case material, describing a fetishist, a coprophiliac, a kleptomanic, a voyeur and exhibitionist, a sadomasochist, and three homosexuals (one psychoneurotic, one psychotic, and one 'constitutional'.)
Boss's criticism of Freud, which relates to Freud's theoretical formulations rather than to the psycho-analytic technique, is of a fundamental nature, for it is directed against Freud's attempt to treat psychology as a natural science. Boss describes this as an objectifying mode of thinking, deriving from Descartes' res cogitans and res extensa; this 'mechanistic-physical' procedure reduces man and his love, in a causal-genetic manner, to mere instinctuality, to a collection of assumed part-instincts, separated from an outer world having countless external 'instinctual objects'. Thus an artificial conceptual system takes the place of full psychological reality and the essential nature of man escapes Freud's libido theory. Human existence, the essential something to which all these drives and objects belong, slips through these