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The Annual of Psychoanalysis, a publication of the Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis, enjoys a well-deserved reputation for the excellence of the papers which it assembles yearly and offers to the psychoanalytic community. Volume XV, the 1987 edition, is a worthy representative of this distinguished series, with contributions divided into seven sections: theoretical studies; clinical studies; psychoanalysis and psychotherapy; child analysis; developmental psychology; applied psychoanalysis; and psychoanalysis and education.
In the first of three theoretical studies, Virginia C. Barry, elaborating upon Noy's (1969) redefinition of primary and secondary process thinking as serving self-integration and reality-adaptation respectively, argues that the need to maintain self-integration takes precedence over the need to process reality accurately. Hence, when individuals are maturationally capable of symbolic processes (after eighteen months) accurate processing of reality may be sacrificed through mechanisms such as disavowal in order to escape the trauma of psychological disintegration. Whereas pathology based on the foregoing defensive process is amenable to later interpretation, experiences retained in a presymbolic, psychobiologic or perceptual-action mode from the period before 'imaging capacity' is present are, to use Gedo's (1979) phrase, 'beyond interpretation' having become visceral convictions or pervasive, unquestionable realities which have been integrated passively rather than actively (that is, non-conflictually) and which retain their affective significance in the face of what ought to be conflicting information. Clinical material illustrating these concepts is provided.
The second theoretical study also elaborates an information-processing model for reconceptualizing fundamental psychic processes. In 'A New Look at Denial and Defense', T. L. Dorpat presents an overview of his 'cognitive-arrest' theory of denial and defence and at the same time provi