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This book is a compilation of 24 of the public lectures to the laity given by Ralph R. Greenson. They are not all of his public lectures but then very few psychoanalysts have had any of their public lectures appear in print. These talks were delivered in a friendly, evocative style, in colloquial speech. They are informative not only to the lay public; the experienced psychoanalyst will find these discourses penetrating and well worth the perusal. In a sense they serve as the second volume of his textbook, The Technique and Practice of Psychoanalysis. Those of us who waited eagerly for the second volume of this work and were disappointed because of Greenson's death, were compensated in a measure by the appearance of the second volume, composed by colleagues from the notes left by Greenson. But these public lectures have the friendly and clear quality of their author, and show precisely the evolution of his clinical views from his clinical material.
All of Greenson's psychoanalytic conclusions familiar to practicing psychoanalysts find some echo in these lectures. The reader will review Greenson's interests in identification, boredom, etc., but new investigations are also given detailed reportage. His originality is clearly demonstrated and his topics reveal the richness of the intellectual life of the seasoned psychoanalyst. For instance, Greenson talks a good deal about death, which very few psychoanalysts have done. In fact, psychoanalysts appear to resemble in some respects those members of the laity who refuse to think about death. Analysts do not find themselves immune to the fear of death, which Greenson says is universal. Whether Greenson is right in proclaiming the universality of the fear of death, this reviewer does not know, but such a fear made its appearance in such varied personalities as Alfred Adler, Pablo Picasso, and Samuel Johnson. At least the fear can be understood to be widely felt, and so far psychoanalysis has done little to investigate this f