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Having heard and read the words of Iago Galdston for nearly 30 years, he has appeared to me as one who was actively involved in many aspects of psychiatry, as one most learned and erudite, as one with admirable felicity of speech and language, as one with a deep interest in the history of psychiatry, the history of ideas, and general philosophical implications of the content and work of psychiatry. This volume, containing 33 essays and studies, dated 1946 to 1972, confirms these appearances, and they provide a delightful intellectual repast.
It is impossible to comment on each of the chapters. They appear in sections: Psychopathology and Psychotherapy; Freud and Freudiana; On the Sociology of Psychiatry; Existentialism; and Some Historical and Philosophical Jottings. However, several were more appealing than others, perhaps because of their originality, and because of their historical, literary, and biblical foundations. Let me cite two examples.
“Psychiatry Without Freud” is a fascinating essay, in which Dr. Galdston appraises the importance of Freud's contributions, but also places him in a framework of his contemporaries. He employs this style in order to re-introduce us to the ideas of Janet, Pavlov, and Adolph Meyer. Freud was born in 1856, Pierre Janet in 1859, Pavlov in 1849, and Meyer in 1866. Through Janet, Galdston sets the factor of deprivation as opposed to that of opposition or repression emphasized by Freud as the nucleus of the neurosis. Through Pavlov, Galdston questions the nature of cure in psychoanalysis: “To what extent is the analyst's therapy operating as a “reconditioning” of the original conditioned pattern?” Through Meyer, Galdston introduces the reality matrix in which the individual is born, grows, and lives. “Time and matter, opportunity and obligation, are of the essence of life and living. We all muddle through as best we can and the mark of the therapist is that he muddles a little better, and, by that token, can help those who muddle a