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The eight papers collected in this volume, which include two very good, brief case presentations, are entitled: Role of the Ego in Psychoanalytic Therapy (a report given in 1939 at the First Franco-British Reunion of Psychoanalysts), The Role of the Ego in the Structure of Character and Behavior, Psychoanalytic Observation of a Masochistic Character, The Clinical Manifestations of Aggression and Their Role in Psychoanalytic Treatment, Introduction to
Psychosomatic Medicine, Remarks on the Cure of an Organic Neurosis by Psychoanalytic Treatment, The Psychoanalytic Therapy, and Reflections on Transference and Countertransference. Some of these articles were written for the nonpsychoanalytic public and the others for analysts.
The book as a whole reveals the clinical and therapeutic experience of its author, who is one of the leading psychoanalysts in Paris. As to the theoretical formulations, of which this volume contains fewer than might be inferred from the title, this reviewer wishes to draw attention to one original viewpoint advanced by the author. Nacht considers the aggressive drive to be the main pathogenic factor. According to him, even libidinal conflicts acquire their pathogenicity only through the addition of elements of aggression. Unfortunately, however, he gives no reasons for this opinion nor does he support it by clinical material.
Without any doubt the last chapter, a paper on transference and countertransference read by the author at the Congress of the International Psychoanalytic Association in Zürich in 1949, is the most interesting. It is characteristic of a trend of which there have recently been some examples also in this country. Discussing the handling of cases in which the transference—or certain forms of it—becomes an obstacle to the termination of treatment, Nacht expresses the belief that in some of these cases it is necessary to take recourse to a wider spacing of sessions and to make the patient aware that the analyst is 'a man