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The Goals of Psychoanalysis is a collection of articles, in four parts. The first and last are extensive investigations of specific and circumscribed fields: 'The theory of identification' and 'Theoretical and clinical aspects of supervision'. In my reading they dialogue with each other, but they could just as well have been published as separate books. They would have earned their place in the working library of any analyst. As a matter of fact the hundred-paged section on identification, with all its sub-groupings and ramifications, could be used as a book of reference by any student of the theories and techniques dealing with processes of internalization and externalization.
The second, shortest, part of the book also deals with a special theme: 'The sense of identity', while the third part presents a collage of articles on many different psychoanalytical subjects, theoretical as well as clinical.
The author, León Grinberg, initially trained and worked as a psychoanalyst in Argentina. As the political situation in the country made psychoanalytical practice more and more difficult, he, in 1976, accepted an invitation to come to Madrid. Franco had recently died and the process of democratization in Spain had just started. At the time there was only a handful of analysts in Madrid. Today there are 45 and, with about 100 candidates in training, it has become a big society. León Grinberg has played an important role in this development.
This means that Grinberg's experience of psychoanalysis and of discussions and evolutions within psychoanalytical institutions covers a great part of the Spanish-speaking world. For a long time Spanish-speaking analysts have also been able to read him. The aim of this book is therefore to present to English-speaking colleagues, Grinberg's thoughts about psychoanalysis, its theories and techniques. To have this, so to speak, 'Spanish' perspective presented (of course it is only one of many possible perspectives) by way of an