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This book is extremely difficult to review because it is actually several books in one. On one level it is a reformulation of the Oedipus myth following Freud and Jung. On another level it is a radical attack on the entire analytic model. On a third level it offers new approaches to the transference. Fourthly, there are ten appendices on sex and marriage, which are excellent. So, where does one start?
The first sentence reads:
This book originated out of failure: failure of my own analysis … to heal the original wounding split within my own nature and my consequent failure as a therapist to help others who had similar psychic injuries.
The author's admission makes one wonder about the purely subjective nature of his material. However, the author goes on to develop objectively the theme which is the ‘incest taboo and its significance for human love’. Stein's view, following Jung, is that the deep human urge towards incestuous union stems from the desire to be reconnected with one's own unconscious depths. The incest taboo transforms sex ‘from a purely biological urge to the supreme instrument of man's psychological development’. The ‘incest wound’ is Stein's phrase for the person's incapacity to fully respond in intimate relationships. Because the incest taboo has fallen into the unconscious, we fear incest when it occurs. This fear splits mind and body, sexuality and love. The author gives an excellent description of how eros/love and sex become split. For me this was the strongest part of the book.
Stein questions whether analysis heals the incest wound. He feels that analysis perpetuates the split because the patient expresses all his deepest emotions, while the analyst remains detached and objective. Healing can take place only if the analyst is able to share and express his own feelings and fantasies freely. Stein faults both psychoanalysts and analytical psychologists on this point. It is at this point that Stein undervalues Jung's concept of the dialectical nature