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Any attempt to review comprehensively this companion volume to the author's 1979 book, Beyond Interpretation: Toward a Revised Theory for Psychoanalysis, would require an exploration of that work, which has already been much discussed.1 Rather than undertake an extensive consideration of Gedo's views on theoretical questions, I shall focus on his approach to more concrete clinical issues. That in fact was his own stated intention in writing this follow-up volume. At the same time, it will be necessary to indicate briefly something about the theoretical underpinnings that guide the present work and that are discussed in abbreviated form in some of its chapters.
Gedo's reformulation of psychoanalytic theory is based on his conviction that traditional concepts are internally inconsistent, and that therapeutic activities based on them have to be revised to provide a new framework. His central theme is that there is a relatively permanent hierarchy of aims, both organismic and subjective, the goals and values of which are considered to constitute the self-organization, embracing biological needs and subjective wishes. This concept is offered as a coherently systematized psychoanalytic psychology.
The hierarchical schema proposed by Gedo has been formulated and further developed in three books: Models of the Mind (1973), coauthored with Arnold Goldberg; Beyond Interpretation (1979); and the current volume (1981). Gedo's schema depicts sequential phases of development which proceed time-wise from birth to a differentiation of body boundaries; consolidation of the self-organization; formation of superego; and formation of the repression barrier. There is a correlation between each of these phases and corresponding modes of functioning, each with its own specific predisposition to psychopathology. In Mode I, there is a pre-psychological organization, subject to over-stimulation or traumatization. Mode II involves experiential and subjective symbolic functioning, wit