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In evaluating this book for a scientific journal one must consider it from two points of view: first, as a case study, covering a long series of interviews with an actual patient; and second, as a study in the development of unconscious material apart from personal implications.
I. The Case. Adler draws a picture of an actual woman whose inner experiences he describes. Her fears, her anxieties and hopes, her weakness and her strength are there for anyone with eyes to see, and so are the emotional problems dependent on the analytical process itself—the transference, the counter-transference, and the projections inevitable in any fundamental coming-to-terms with the unconscious. His study demonstrates the process of individuation not only through the development of the symbols in the unconscious material but also through a detailed record of the steps by which it came about.
The analysis lasted just a year and, whether we agree with the analyst's procedure and handling of the material or not, we must recognize that the outcome was successful above the ordinary. The patient, a professional woman of considerable maturity, developed the claustrophobia that led her to seek help from an analyst in her forty-ninth year. From the first her dreams contained archetypal symbols of wide significance, interspersed with others of more usual content. Adler reports what was said about them during