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The editors' stated aim in assembling this volume was to provide an up-todate overview of psychoanalysis “concisely packaged in one volume” (xviii). By using a large page format and double columns, the designers at APPI did manage to make this volume a hundred pages shorter, though a pound and a half heavier, than its predecessor the Nersessian and Kopff Textbook of Psychoanalysis . It is also broader in scope, covering not only the classic areas of theory, treatment and research but also any other area of human endeavor that seems amenable to discussion from a psychoanalytic perspective. Although each chapter is the work of a different individual or team, the style is uniform and the writing is clear and bright. The copy editors at APPI merit high praise for having made this material accessible to the ordinary reader. What will he or she find in it?
The various chapters, which are collected into sections such as Core Concepts, Treatment and Technique and Psychoanalysis and Related Disciplines, range of excellent summaries of the literature (for example, Meissner on The Dynamic Unconscious), through interesting essays by thoughtful scholars (Greenberg on Theories of Therapeutic Action), to superficial but not fatally inaccurate presentations of a particular topic, to abysmal polemics by individuals who seem to have limited understanding of, but clear opinions about, their topic (Dimen and Goldner on Gender and Sexuality). Taken as a whole, they present a good picture of the views of members of the American Psychoanalytic Association who teach in medical schools—to which class this reviewer belongs—and their professional friends hold about what others should know about our field. Some of the chapters, particularly those on the activities of psychoanalysts outside of North America and of scholars in others disciplines, offer information that is not readily available elsewhere. They make good points of entry into a field in which a reader might be interested, but they a