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It is with pleasure that one opens this new book by the author of The self and the object world, anticipating more of her lucidity and of her vision of the self which seemed to open common ground between psychoanalysis and analytical psychology.
In many ways one is not disappointed: the range is vast. Dr Jacobson first presents psychoanalytic theories of the affects and of normal and pathological, but fleeting moods. This is a good chapter, with clear examples of the effects of ambivalent conflict on ego functions. She next discusses the rôle of denial in the development of the psychoses, and gives a masterly account of depersonalization which includes a particularly striking section on mourning. In this chapter she makes the point that the amnesia of depression is not a result of repression but is built on to historical defects in the laying down of memory traces which, in turn, result from altered perception and reality testing at a very early age, and which are reconstructed and re-tested in analysis.
In the second part of the book problems of nosology in depression are first discussed and various aspects of the psychopathology and handling of psychotic depression. There are many clinical illustrations.
The chapter on nosology is a confusing one. Dr Jacobson strives to establish criteria between reactive and psychotic depressions, but in her clinical accounts she finds no