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Dear Editor,
Samuel Guttman (1985, 66: 167–70) makes a good point in his article on 'deviant theories'. Unfortunately, he then assumes a condescending and dismissing attitude toward all non Freudian points of view within psychoanalysis. The strong point he makes is that psychoanalytic theorists other than Freud have aspired to do more than they were capable of doing. The resulting theories were, as a result often meaningful contributions but never all encompassing and revolutionary. I agree that Jung, Adler and Rank, to use Dr Guttman's examples, partially discredited their highly significant contributions by embedding them in theories which went too far toward the peculiar. One might add Reich, Ferenczi, Horney, Sullivan, M. Klein and perhaps even Kohut to that list, though their work was not meant to be quite as all assuming as that of Jung, Adler and Rank, and Horney, Sullivan and Kohut did not become grandiose or mystical.
I believe that Dr Guttman swerves toward dogmatism when he ignores the importance of the above theorists' work in emphasizing how far they fall from being great leaders and how much their efforts reflect silly, adolescent rebellion toward Freud. This name calling is precisely what he warns against in the beginning of his essay. For example, he gives very short shrift to Rank as having 'done excellent work in "applied" psychoanalysis'. A reading of Menaker's (1982) book illustrates how much more Rank had to say about mainstream as opposed to applied psychoanalysis. In his final paragraph he fumes against an unidentified theorist (is it Kohut?) who rediscovers the obvious, recites platitudes, throws overboard Freud's important discoveries and facilitates a 'net loss of insight' in our profession. By the end of his article Dr Guttman has become a defender of the faith.
The theorists which Dr Guttman mentions and