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The Annual Survey of Psychoanalysis, in the four volumes that have thus far been published, has become an important reference book for study, learning, and teaching. In the fourth volume, for
the year 1953, the editorial staff has kept its enthusiasm and careful and independent evaluation; the editors have avoided schematization, and the text remains highly readable. The volume contains two hundred fifty-eight abstracts from periodicals, twenty book reports, and an extensive bibliography and index, giving details of progress in all fields of psychoanalysis.
The opening chapter on history is written by Sigmund Gabe; Leo Rangell and Nathaniel Ross wrote the theoretical part; John Frosch concentrates on clinical studies, dreams, and training. Applied psychoanalysis is discussed lucidly by George Devereux, Renato J. Almansi, and Mark Kanzer. Child analysis (Nathaniel Ross) and analytic trends in psychiatry (Lawrence Kolb) are dealt with on an equally high level, as is Joseph Lander's sixty-page summary of psychoanalytic therapy.
The Annual more and more assumes a definite gestalt. It is not merely a collection of abstracts. The screening, organizing, careful evaluating and editing make the book a genuine guide in the vast literature of psychoanalysis. The reader of the abstracts may sometimes appreciate more the compact reports than some of the lengthier original publications. At other times, the reader's special need may lead him back to the sources. The Annual does not give a quick and easy digest, but opens the way into current psychoanalytic literature. The introductions to some of the chapters, the transition from one report to the other, and the concluding summaries underline trends in analytic research and are often masterpieces of concise writing.