You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
It is a fortunate time for the appearance of this book, a time when many psychoanalysts are concerned more than ever with exploring the inner world, the world of psychic reality. This world is 'immaterial', in that it contains no material facts of a sensory nature, yet is often more real than the world of the senses. Nightmare testifies to that. The subtitle unfortunately is not on the cover; it explains that the book concerns 'Freud's Discovery of Psychic Reality and Klein's Development of his Work'.
There is increasing interest in areas of mental functioning that concern the inner world and its development in infancy and childhood. This is apparent, for instance, in the announcement of papers that will appear in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1990. Readers will be presented with contributions such as 'A reconsideration of unconscious fantasies in psychoanalysis', 'Fresh explorations of psychoanalytic technique and observation, which address empathy and insight', 'An empirical observation of young children' and 'An investigation into mother-child interaction'.
Dr Robert Caper is well qualified to contribute to these interests: a graduate and Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at U.C.L.A. School of Medicine and a supervisor at the Reiss-Davis Child Study Center in Los Angeles, he is on the Faculty and Board of Directors of the Psychoanalytic Center of California and is a practising child and adult psychoanalyst.
In this book he traces the development of Freud's theories which lead him from his biological and neurological beginnings to his understanding of the mind from the point of view of the inner world. Freud's understanding of dreams, transference, symptoms and other indices of the unconscious, lead him to the world of psychic reality. The understanding of this world was developed in greater detail in the work of Melanie Klein.
Misunderstanding and confusion can arise when unconscious processes are being considered and Klei