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This book is the first part of a projected five volume work, an ambitious and carefully thought-out undertaking, in which Dr. French proposes to construct a picture of the integrative apparatus and to demonstrate the operation of this construct with clinical data from a case which had been treated for two years. Actually, the author's goals transcend these manifest intentions. By starting with what
he calls 'common-sense notions of motivation and insight', Dr. French dispenses, at least in this volume of Basic Postulates, with the 'theoretical preconceptions', the working hypotheses of psychoanalysis. In effect he seeks to establish the validity of his own working method and frame of reference. Wittingly or not, he embarks upon an epistemology of psychoanalysis.
It is of prime importance therefore to note the sources of the materials and the manner of their presentation. The patient whose treatment is used to illustrate the author's theses was not treated by the author personally, but by a colleague at intervals never exceeding three times a week. During a critical five week period, for example, the patient was seen only nine times. Furthermore, in a book of two hundred and seventy-two pages, less than twenty are devoted to the history and clinical productions of the patient. As a result, it is difficult for the reader to follow with conviction the correlation of the author's theories with the clinical illustrations.
Except for the inevitable nod of indebtedness to Freud, the author's framework for a theory of integration may be regarded as unblemished by any association with the psychoanalytic formulations of Hartmann, Kris, Loewenstein, Hoffer, Spitz, Nunberg, or Waelder, to mention only a few who have written about the psychology of ego functioning. It is possible that the subsequent volumes of this work will remedy these omissions. Both author and reviewer are placed in a disadvantageous position when only a portion of a work is available for study at