The Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique, Revised Edition: R. Horatio Etchegoyen, translated by Patricia Pitchon,  Karnac Books, London, 1999,  876 pp., $110.

This is a revised edition of an outstanding—perhaps the most outstanding—textbook on psychoanalytic technique, first published in 1991. The revisions of the 1991 edition are very small and, outside of a few words or sentences

here and there, consist primarily of the addition of two new small subsections, 27.8 (Scenic Comprehension) and 50.11 (Insight as the Ostensive, Counter-inductive Resolution of a Pragmatic Paradox). The “Preface to the 1999 Edition” briefly mentions what has been added (p. xxiii), although I did not find it clear there as to what is specifically new in the English language revision of the textbook.

This preface also refers to what the author calls a “notice” written by me in the American Journal of Psychiatry (Chessick, 1992). This “notice” was a full two pages of small print, reviewing the book for that journal. Although Etchgoyen states “my gratification at his praise was tempered by the food for thought afforded by his criticisms” (p. xxii), I did not find any revision of the book that showed evidence that this “food” had been chewed and digested; it seems simply to have been spat out. Because of this, the careful review I presented in the American Journal of Psychiatry still expresses my basic assessment of this extraordinary book, which the author states in the new preface “was intended to serve as a comprehensive manual of technique, but not an exhaustive one” (p. xxiii); he concludes, “With all its shortcomings and merits, it is fine as it is” (p. xxiii). This raises the question of what the purpose of a revised edition might be. In my opinion, after reading my 1992 review of the book, if the psychoanalyst feels it is worth the time, as I have recommended it should be, it makes very little difference whether he or she obtains the 1991 edition or the 1999 so-called revised edition. Because the book is expensive it would seem to me rather exorbitant to spend another $110 on what is almost an identical volume if one already has the 1991 ed