You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Through this integrated series of essays Robert Waelder hopes '… to combat widespread misunderstanding of psychoanalysis and thereby to help conserve what we have inherited; to see psychoanalysis in its context in the history of our civilization; and to help discover the most promising avenues of advancement'. The intention of offering a comprehensive survey of psychoanalytic theory is explicitly disavowed, and it is emphasized that only basic theory is presented, with 'some aspects of analytic theory, in particular the more abstract ones, not treated at all or treated in a cursory fashion'.
Even though this book expressly concerns basic theory, the careful reader who searches for details and implications beyond the fundamentals of psychoanalytic theory will be rewarded by the stimulating discussion of questions well beyond an elementary level. As a scientific logician and theoretician of broad background and perspective, Dr. Waelder does a service to psychoanalysis by bringing to the relatively uninformed reader, as well as to the theoretically-inclined and clinically-experienced psychoanalyst, an appreciation of scientific elements and logical operations implicit in the elaboration of a body of psychoanalytic theory that is sound and internally consistent. The author's interest in philosophical and scientific considerations which bear upon valid theory building is evident throughout the entire book. It is pointed out that Freud in some of his articles proposed theoretical formulations immediately referent to psychological facts and phenomena, but proposed others more speculatively, at a higher level of abstraction, which could not be so applied.
A book of essays on basic psychoanalytic theory that is not bound by formal structure and is not comprehensively inclusive has the advantage of flexibility. The author gains a certain freedom to select for emphasis and discussion those topics, concepts, and aspects of theory that especially interest him, and this may ad