Is psychoanalysis in danger of becoming an ossified relic of history or does it harbor the potential for growth and transformation? This major challenge of our time is being addressed critically and constructively in this timely, sparkling, and incisive book written by a devoted psychoanalyst. Though short and appealing by its language, it needs to be read and reread to absorb fully the author's message as well as intent. The intent is to stir us up so we look critically at our state of knowledge, not to give answers. His message is that psychoanalysts, far from dealing with certain expertise of the psyche—an impossibility—could become an expert on the limits of our knowing, on tolerating the impossibility of knowing who we are.

This book is far from bashing Freud. Phillips is honoring the Freud that Freud denied. The Freud of the Enlightenment, that is, of reason, betrayed the Freud who discovered the unconscious, namely, our nature-given undercurrent of nonreason, the unruly imp who trips us up and cannot be controlled. Freud did