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This book provides a welcome re-estimation of the present state of psychoanalysis in the United States.
Throughout this work Eissler affirms his fascination with talent and the creative process. He believes that mankind has a better chance of survival from gaining an awareness of the antagonistic creative and destructive forces that operate within the ego. It is in terms of the ego that Eissler elaborates the interplay of life and death instincts within our civilization. The Introduction ends with a beautiful analysis of Goethe's Faust.
A main theme of the book is that although psychoanalysis has flourished in this country (as evidenced by the constant growth of The American Psychoanalytic Association) there is apparent in it a threat of regression. This, Eissler believes, is the consequence of its restrictive alignment with medicine and psychiatry, and its exclusion of gifted lay analysts. Eissler believes, furthermore, that there is a decline in psychoanalytic creativity in this country. He thinks that the current requirement that the psychoanalyst first be a medical graduate is unfavorable to the development of psychoanalysis and that the experiences of medical student and intern may blunt an individual's sensitivity to suffering. Eissler is fundamentally opposed to the commitment of psychoanalysis to incorporation with medical schools and universities.
With penetrating scholarship, and often with eloquence and passion, Eissler refutes those who, he feels, have misrepresented and debased psychoanalysis. Although Eissler's point of view may to some seem extreme and at times one-sided, this adds to the fascination inherent in many passages throughout this work.
Perhaps Eissler may not make allowances for the fact that we are a pragmatic nation more interested in quick results than in long-range possibilities and philosophical abstractions; we are thus naturally more inclined to place emphasis on analysis as a therapeutic tool than as a metapsychology or as a hu