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This slender volume is another contribution to the distinguished monograph series that has made such a remarkable contribution to psychoanalytic studies over the years. The present entry will take its place, if only because it forces us to go back to Freud's early formulations and carefully rethink the logic and orientation of his thinking that lay at the roots of psychoanalysis. Prof. Herzog brings the acumen and power of logical analysis to her task that presents an indepth probing of Freud's thinking and brings into question both the coherence of his thinking and the philosophical suppositions that supported it.
The careful exegesis of the Freudian texts, with particular focus on the Project, leads the reader through a labyrinthian argument that requires careful attention and diligence equal to the task. The argument centres around the distinction between consciousness and the unconscious and its vicissitudes as it was transformed from the early theory of the Project and the Studies on Hysteria, to the more developed topographical model, and finally to the definitive structural model. As Freud struggled to clarify the relation between the unconscious aspects of human mental functioning and the conscious aspects, he drew the line of distinction in various ways and in different conceptual places. Herzog applies the resources of logical analysis to these texts and finds inconsistencies and contradictions.
The 'dynamic distinction' is the distinction between consciousness in all its forms and the repressed. The distinction was apparently not clear in Freud's mind in the beginning—his understanding of repression was almost like another form of consciousness, a counterwill that operated alongside normal consciousness. As the idea of the unconscious gradually clarified it created a problem of how it related to the repressed. The relationship was clearly not one-to-one since he had reason to think that not all of the unconscious was repressed. The possibility of a