Schools of Psychoanalytic Thought. An Exposition, Critique, and Attempt at Integration: By Ruth L. Munroe. New York: The Dryden Press, Publishers, 1955. 670 pp.

Almost fifty years have passed since the first schisms took place in psychoanalysis. When Adler and Jung broke with Freud, psychoanalysis as a school of thought was in its very beginning. the term 'psychoanalysis' itself had only recently been coined and much of what is now fundamental to psychoanalytic theory and knowledge was yet to be discovered. The succeeding years, especially the late thirties and forties, witnessed further controversies. Although the departure of Rank, Horney, Fromm, and Sullivan from the basic tenets of psychoanalytic theory may not have been as dramatic as that of their predecessors, it was, for a time at least, quite clamorous and bitter. In the meantime, the contributions of psychoanalysis to art, medicine, psychotherapy, and science had attained wide recognition. It commanded a growing public acknowledgement, confused by the spectacle of rival groups of psychoanalysts—each purporting to be the representative of this new body of science. For patients contemplating analysis, for doctors considering training in psychotherapy, and for students of psychological theory, this confusion has very practical implications.

Little elucidation of this confusion came from many of the expositions of psychoanalytic critique, most of which were written in a rather partisan spirit. Most articulate and polemic have been the spokesmen for the 'dissident' groups. Karen Horney, for example, took scientific issues to the general public in a series of popular books. The need for a comprehensive, definitive presentation of the issues has long been appreciated, and this need is exactly what Ruth Munroe has attempted to fill by Schools of Psychoanalytic Thought. There