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David Allen has filled an empty, or at least somewhat neglected, area in Freudian theory and has peopled it with lively case histories to show how it appears during psychoanalytic treatment. This area is defined as ‘a look-show transaction’ which in the course of a typical analysis allows the analysand ‘to experience a permanent feeling change’, in which ‘scopophilic-exhibitionistic factors play a critical part in human personality development …’ True to basic Freudian theory, Allen is concerned with ‘the vicissitudes or natural changes of scopophilia and exhibitionism in psycho-sexual development.… Looking and being looked at are among the earliest libidinal experiences.’ These lead to ‘a belief in the power of a wish, a thought or a will to influence human pleasure and pain. These are the beginnings of magical thinking, the headwaters of the rivers of science and religion’ (p. 29).
Chapter I recapitulates Freud's interest in scopophilia-exhibitionism with reference to some of Freud's personal statements and Jones’ biographical exposure of Freud's own look-show tendencies and conflicts. In Chapter II, ‘Facts and concepts’, various subjects of a general nature are discussed, including a section on the significance of clothes in furthering or inhibiting scopophilia and exhibitionism. In Chapter II, the author proceeds to elaborate conflicts in learning, life style, and psychopathology. Here also begin the series of cases which, on the whole, exhibit a wide range of scopophobic states observed during analytical treatment. Chapter IV describes ‘looking-showing factors in therapeutic regression and its reversal’ leading in Chapter V to ‘Resolving the scophophobic element in the transference neurosis’. In the last chapter, VI, Allen concludes this brief but compact monograph with ‘Some comments on scopophilia and exhibitionism in creativity’.
Considering Allen's exhaustive exploration of his theme, with its relevance for therapy, he seems too modest in claiming for it only