Conflict and Compromise: Therapeutic Implications. Scott Dowling, ed. New York:  International Universities Press, 1993.  238 pp.

Classical analysts consider conflict and compromise to be the best organizing concepts in psychoanalysis. For them the drives (libidinal and aggressive) are the wellsprings of human motivation. Indulging drives in fact or fantasy may give rise to unpleasure and therefore to conflict. It is the frustration of drive-related needs and wishes that leads to psychic pain. Clinicans committed to conflict theory as the keystone of psychoanalysis will say, as Elizabeth Lord Mayer says, “talk about practically anything from a psychoanalytic point of view and you find you're talking about conflict.” While there is general agreement that conflict exists in all of us, disagreement arises when we seek to define conflict and describe its origins, that is, say exactly what is in conflict or decide what to do about it in the clinical situation.

This book contains six theoretical chapters, followed by four chapters which discuss the six theoretical chapters, and five rebutals. In one theoretical chapter, Jacob Arlow contrasts the concept of conflict with the parallel concepts of trauma and deficit. For Arlow the type of object relationships that give rise to deficits are inexorably involved in the process of conflict and therefore not excluded from its overall influence. Whereas for Arlow all conflict arises from the drives, other theorists believe that deficiencies in ego functions are unrelated to the sexual and aggressive conflicts. They believe that the roots of the problem lie in the failures of the mother's capacity to nurture or empathize with her infant. Such trauma causes basic defects in crucial internalization processes.

A second theoretical chapter by Dale Boesky describes and illustrates the organizing concept of compromise formation as conceived by Charles Brenner. Boesky maintains that the concept of compromise formation is important because it accounts for symptom for