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Robert Langs is well known in Jungian circles for his early studies of derivative communication, communication styles, and the analytic frame. Less well known is Langs' more recent research rooting psychic conflict in death-anxiety and death-related trauma. Freud on a Precipice introduces the reader to Langs' latest work in the form of an interesting and at times gripping narrative. The book is of special interest to Jungians because it creatively uses, or parallels, certain ideas of Jung and simultaneously invites a new application of Jungian theory to the roots of psychic conflict.
Freud on a Precipice can be understood as Langs' attempt to psychoanalyse Sigmund Freud in order to resolve a central theoretical conundrum: namely, why Freud changed from his earlier, topographic model of the psyche to the later more influential and (to Langs' mind) less potent structural theory? This is an analytic issue, Langs contends, because Freud's theoretical shift is justified neither by the data Freud adduces nor by specific theoretical problems with the topographical model. Hence Freud's shift must be explained in terms of unconscious motivations. Much of the book, therefore, is what Langs terms ‘psychoanalytic detective work’, where the author examines events in Freud's life and some possible unconscious motivations that together could explain Freud's theoretical change.
Langs' text has at least three distinguishable purposes. First the book adds to the growing body of literature in which analysts try to understand Freudian theory through analysing Freud's personal psychology. In this process, Langs highlights several striking points about Freud's life and psychology, such as the time-frame of Freud's theoretical shift (around the one-year anniversary of his father's death), which suggest that the change in Freud's theory was unconsciously motivated by questions about his own origin and a number of death-related issues which seem to surround that origin.
Langs' second purpose,