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This is a difficult book to read. Its constantly high level of abstraction takes the professional reader into cloudy, new, and unexplored areas. Edelson explores the conceptual foundations of psychoanalysis and not surprisingly shows that it is a most complicated subject. A political scientist, in trying to define what it is to be a Republican or a Democrat in the United States today, would run into many of the same problems. Psychoanalysis has greatly changed or been changed since its early days. Freud synthesized it and made it tripartite as a body of psychological theory, a treatment modality, and a research tool. It still has a tripartite structure, but each facet has grown and expanded tremendously.
Edelson entered into the fascinating world of psychoanalysis, as so many of us did, when it was gaining respectability and offered us the most promising tools with which to understand human behavior. Freud's focusing on “the unconscious” and how it determines our behavior was a scientific breakthrough not unlike the microscope opening up a new world of cells, bacteria, and so forth. But psychoanalysis was popularized and oversold, and became many new things. We may all have experienced a temporary disillusionment and tried to recapture our “old time religion.”
Edelson documents all of this and urges us to get back to basics as he begs the question: What is the core theory of psychoanalysis? He likens his work to a gardener weeding and pruning his garden so that the overgrowth does not kill off the beautiful flowers. He tells us that psychoanalysis was never intended to be a general psychology. He even questions whether ego psychology should be a core constituent of psychoanalysis. In assigning priorities or primacy to core psychoanalytic concepts he emphasizes unconscious mental content and processes, most especially those having to do with sexual wishes arising in childhood. He fears that Freud's basic psychoanalytic theory of sexuality is suffering from attrition. I