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The Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1981 and sponsored a scientific conference on “The Vital Issues” in psychoanalysis. This first volume contains papers from the conference under the title of “Psychoanalysis as an Intellectual Discipline.” The second volume will deal with the clinical theory of psychoanalysis and its applications. This volume is divided into the following four parts: (1) the origins of motivation, (2) interdisciplinary problems, (3) creativity and the life course, and (4) on the epistomology of psychoanalysis. There are 14 papers in all by 19 contributing authors, 10 of whom are members of the Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis. In this review I have elected to very briefly outline each paper rather than to discuss a few in more detail.
The section on the origins of motivation is introduced by Barbara Rocah with an historical-conceptual review of psychoanalytic developmental theory. David Freedman then discusses the origins of motivation using his clinical observations on infants who were born blind. These congenitally blind infants have a 25 percent rate of autistic-like psychosis. Infants with congenital deafness do not have such a high incidence. Infants who suffer from severe environmental deprivation and parental neglect show a clinical picture more similar to the congenitally blind children than those who are congenitally deaf. The infant is “prewired” to tune into the mother's voice and face. If an infant is born blind and the mother does not realize this, she cannot communicate properly with the infant and there is an increased danger of autistic behavior.
In Michael Basch's response he emphasizes the importance of early affect in the infant. He sees it as a nonverbal language providing the biological foundation which explains motivation. He discards the traditional psychoanalytic concept of psychic energy or drive and replaces it with an inherited subcortical system of responses. These responses transf