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This is an abridged edition of an excellent work first published in French and English in 1956. It suffers only from the shortcoming that, apart from one additional chapter of 28 pages on schizophrenics, it has not been revised since its first edition and that, although shortened from two volumes into one, it still appears to be somewhat bulky and voluble. Twelve years are a long time, and the advancement of science does not stand still, even if there are no great breakthroughs. The shifts of emphasis are sometimes remarkable. This edition does not do justice to the implied obligation.
Its first three chapters (Nacht et al.) about the indications and counterindications for the psychoanalysis of adults (with both clinical and theoretical observations), although making a point of the analysis of the ego, do not really add substantial new sidelights. However, Nacht's own tenets sound surprisingly up to date. To mention only a few: on the "presence" of the analyst, that it is more important what he is than what he says, on the danger of analytic treatment becoming a routine (leading to masochistic transference relationship), and that the reconstruction of the patient's personality has to have precedence over the reconstruction of his past. He holds—which however is debatable—that the treatment cannot modify the id, only the ego, and that Freud has originally "opposed" the application of psychoanalysis to pedagogics, whereas on Freud's part, this was more a kind of "keeping aloof" from this application himself. A useful synopsis of the technical rules follow, with the warning to keep clear of their too rigid use. Frustrations should be "dosed" lest they become traumatic, like the original ones have been. A "demythologization" of the analyst should precede the termination of treatment. He is in favour of multiple but short interpretations reflecting the cumulative result of the analyst's impressions. It is mostly the "nodal points" of the patient's narrative w