Aspects of Internalization: By Roy Schafer. New York: Int. Univ. Press. 1968. Pp. 254.

In the post-war decades a great deal of psychoanalytic research into borderline cases has focused on mechanisms of introjection, identification and projection. There was a distinct need for an attempt to integrate all this work into a sharper definition of the concepts concerned. Dr Schafer's attempt to metapsychologically re-evaluate, define and discuss the exact nature and character of these processes according to psychoanalysis is a salutary one. As the title indicates, Dr Schafer basically tries to encompass these processes in the larger process of internalization. He states: 'Internalization refers to all those processes by which the subject transforms real or imagined regulatory interactions with his environment, and real or imagined characteristics of his environment, into inner regulations and characteristics.'

What would perhaps provoke a great deal of discussion in certain quarters is Dr Schafer's attempt to clearly demarcate fantasy and daydreaming from primary process mentation. To him, daydreams or fantasies are always preconscious or conscious processes. In elaborating his discussion of the various mechanisms and their role in intrapsychic functioning, the uthor also offers new concepts, like 'object localization' and 'subjective self'. The whole book is a very erudite and creative discussion of some of the most complex theoretical concepts in psychoanalysis, and it deserves critical study.