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Every one of the three hundred and forty pages of this book is a reader's nightmare. While this will seem a prejudiced and unscientific evaluation, it leads directly to the central controversy of the book. Instead of stating complicated and complex problems in the accustomed or accepted language of psychiatry, psychotherapy, or psychoanalysis, or at least of medicine, the author develops his own terminology. The reasons for such semantic reorientation are given with German gründlichkeit, but stated in agonizing, exhausting, inexact, argumentative, and often defensive and pointless ways. It is as if the author tries to hang the framework of reference in the temple of science without ever unwrapping the picture to the eyes of the profane.
Schultz-Hencke is known to the German reading psychotherapist through his recent books, Der gehemmte Mensch (Stuttgart, 1940 and 1947), and Lehrbuch der Traumanalyse (1949). The present book grew out of these works and was intended to be a kind of technique of Demo-Lyse. It is not clear whether the author intends to give the philosophy, technique, or the psychology of such psychotherapy. It surely does not give clinical evidence in the usual sense of the word.
According to Schultz-Hencke, the younger generation of psychotherapists can ask for a systematic 'amalgam' which combines the 'good parts' of Freud, Adler, and Jung. According to the author, two thirds of his book is taken from 'Freud's position', and the other third has been taken from Adler and Jung. He considers everything he describes in this book as 'stolen', and takes it upon himself to bring the loot into 'correct methodological focus'. Significantly enough, the author is surprised that 'orthodox analysts' consider his 'position' as containing perhaps only ten per cent of Freud's work. On page 6 of his Foreword, he states that he has dropped only 'the libido theory and the so-called metapsychology'!