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Dr. Karl Stern, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Ottawa, argues that psychoanalysis is compatible with and must be integrated into the Christian idea of man. This argument is addressed to the Catholic reader, to whom he presents a systematic discussion of psychoanalysis and at each point shows how psychoanalytic theory can and must be made a part of Catholic thinking. The psychoanalytic material presented is too elementary to interest the psychiatrist;
the factual and theoretical contributions of psychoanalytic thinking to the study of religion are not included; in short, the book is essentially a religious tract, written by a practicing Catholic for practicing Catholics. The author believes that The Third Revolution is the revolution by which science replaces revelation and faith; the first two revolutions of the nineteenth century were the 'Marxist and racist revolutions'.
The presentation of psychoanalytic theory and examples and the philosophic discussion are careful, articulate, and erudite. This reviewer agrees with at least three points the author makes. The first is that psychoanalytic theory does not require the anti-religious attitudes which Freud expressed so forcefully in The Future of An Illusion, and in Civilization and Its Discontents. Freud himself made this point clear, as in the following passage from a letter to Oskar Pfister (called to my attention by Hans J. Kleinschmidt): 'We must not lose sight of the fact that the opinions expressed in The Future of An Illusion do not form an integral part of the analytic teaching. It is my personal attitude which coincides with that of many nonanalysts and those who preceded them, while it is not shared by many fine analysts.' The second point with which the reviewer concurs is the author's assertion that professions of atheism are often themselves the consequence of unconscious, irrational psychic forces, masquerading as disinterested, scientific objectivity. Moreover it is refreshing