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Studying psychoanalytic theory we may become aware every now and then that it takes much for granted about how we all as persons live our lives. In our theory we may question much but we assume far more. Richard Wollheim, professor of philosophy that he is and dedicated also to psychoanalysis, has perceived the need for a book to supply philosophic backing to psychoanalytic concepts and theories and to display the nature and process of living.
The book began as a course of lectures, the William James Lectures, in the department of philosophy at Harvard University in 1982, but Wollheim tells us in the Preface that he has worked hard upon it since then and found that doing so elicited from him many forgotten thoughts which he recognized as his own from his many years of teaching. For him it has become a compendium, an anthology, of thoughts. Now it reads as a book, not as a series of lectures, provided the reader is alert to contribute the emphases which Wollheim's spoken words will have made apparent. His style is engaging (sometimes difficult) and demands sustained attention to the structure of his sentences, paragraphs, sections, and chapters. The nine chapters consist of from eight to sixteen numbered sections (the average eleven to twelve) and Wollheim frequently enumerates his points and lines of thought, which makes it easier to grasp and to revise the scheme of answers which he reaches.
The Thread of Life seems intended on the one hand for philosophers and academic psychologists, to make them aware of the difference that the experience of being steeped in psychoanalytic thought can make to their disciplines, and on the other hand for psychoanalysts, so that they come to realize and to think hard about the assumptions that underlie their discourse. Inevitably Wollheim is concerned with the variety of psychoanalysis to which he personally subscribes—Kleinian—but his arguments nearly all apply far more widely.
Three sentences from Kierkegaard's Journal begin