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In selecting this work as the fourth in their monograph series, the Editors of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association have stressed once again the high standards that they are setting for future contributions to this distinguished collection. Max Schur is at his best in this carefully wrought critique in which he functions as both renovator and innovator.
Students of Freud's theories were greatly enlightened and stimulated to investigate creatively some of the more intricate details of both psychopathology and normal mental functioning by the development of the structural hypothesis. For a time the workshops of psychoanalysis were too busy employing the new tools to notice that some of them required more careful honing while others needed redesigning to do the job for which they had been created.
Of Freud's basic concepts few have gone unquestioned even by some of his most devoted followers. Most, however have withstood the test of time both with regard to their internal theoretical consistency and to their usefulness as guides to handling technical problems in treatment. The concept of the id has been perhaps the most consistently misused, misunderstood, and criticized of Freud's postulates. Some have contended that the theory lends itself to misuse and that the problem does not lie completely with those who misinterpet Freud's intentions.
What is impressive in Schur's monograph is the manner in which it attempts to reconcile certain ambiguities and contradictions in Freud's varied formulations of the concept id. The way in which some of the "regulatory principles" assigned to the id are reformulated is also highly instructive. The end result is to bring the concept of the id into greater consonance with modern biology.
The monograph is divided into two almost autonomous parts. In the first part the development of the concept of the id in Freud's work, the ambiguities inherent in its general formulation, as well as the ambiguities in the maturat