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The rapid proliferation of ‘psycho-analytic’ theories at first taxed Freud and then divided him from a good many of his early collaborators both in the field of psychiatry and beyond. Institutional attempts to contain this proliferation
and the perhaps inevitable schisms that these engendered, including the secret committee referred to in the title of this book, merely interrupted the flood and diverted the flow. At the beginning of the 21st century even Freud's direct organizational bequest, the International Psychoanalytic Association, is home to mutually incompatible psychoanalytic theories (as is the IAAP), themselves divided by diverse kinds of ‘psycho-analytical’ practices; outside of this may be found greater diversity still, often with only tenuous links to psychoanalytic origins. The pressures which maintain collegial relations and institutional bonds in the face of this at their best promote tolerance, diversity and a genuine wish to understand and critically evaluate other perspectives and this enriches and enlivens the development of the field of study and clinical practice that Freud provided a method of exploring; at their worst they promote intellectually and emotionally dishonest compromises, fudge, obfuscation and self-reference which can act as a kind of dead hand upon development.
It is a relief then when one encounters a courageously explicit and well worked-out position which does not pull its punches, even if one has substantial disagreements with it; I think that Barratt's book succeeds in this. He starts with an account of psychoanalysis that is founded on four fundamental central tenets which he outlines and discusses in chapters 2 to 5: ‘Consciousness and the dynamics of repression’; ‘Personal history and repetition-compulsivity’; ‘Sensual embodiment and the erotics of experience’; ‘Oedipal complexities’. Understanding and accepting these he views as essential to the psychoanalytic project and as defining concepts against which what is and