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Several years ago, Jacob Arlow (1990) put forward a plea for analysts to retire Freud's cases from the active psychoanalytic literature. He maintained that the continuous reinterpretation of the cases had been overdone, and that Freud's formulations in these cases were of historical rather than substantive interest.1 Despite Arlow's eloquent plea, yet another book reinterpreting Freud's case histories, Freud's Case Studies: Self Psychological Perspectives, has appeared.
The goal of this volume (as stated in the introduction) is to help 'deconstruct Freud's case presentations by clarifying Freud's criteria for including and excluding data, underscoring the imperative of theory and psychoanalytic politics that shaped his narratives'. To paraphrase, we can say that the goal of the present volume is to demonstrate that most, if not all, of Freud's cases can (best) be understood utilising Kohutian theory (these concepts include selfobject, empathy, mirroring etc.) Is it possible that the authors would have been wise to listen to Dr Arlow's sage advice and resist the temptation to write one more review of the 'Classic Cases'? In considering this question one comes quickly to recognise that it is difficult (perhaps inconceivable) for any psychoanalytic perspective to overlook Freud's cases. One must conclude that although Arlow's advice is sound, to reinterpret Freud is a rite of passage that every version of psychoanalytic theory must venture through.
In fact, this volume is more than simply a rite of passage; a number of chapters do demonstrate the general relevance of Kohut's concepts and are of considerable interest. Tolpin,