Science and Psychoanalysis, Volume XV. Dynamics of Deviant Sexuality: Edited by Jules H. Masserman, M.D. New York: Grune & Stratton, Inc., 1969. 106 pp.

This fifteenth volume issued by the Publications Committee of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis reflects the thinking of that body on the subject of sexual perversion. There are eight original articles which range from the purely genetic (chromosomal) to the study of conscious masturbatory fantasies, an interesting contribution on identity formation in adolescent homosexuals by Malvina W. Kremer, an informative paper by Warren J. Gadpaille on homosexual activity and homosexuality in adolescence, a descriptive study of fetishism and sadomasochism offered by Paul H. Gebhard, a social psychologist and head of the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University (erroneously designated as a physician in the table of contents), plus a unique study by Emasue Snow and Harvey Bluestone on fetishists who were unable to neutralize their aggressive drives through the use of the fetish and tragically unable to contain their murderous impulses. This article, though fascinating, is too abbreviated; it does not include what must be additional aspects of the phenomenon such as the presence of psychotic mechanisms and/or psychopathy for the enactment of homicide.

The preface by Dr. Masserman sets an unfortunate tone when he charges that classical psychoanalysis, in contrast to 'cultural psychoanalysis', is afflicted with dogmatism. He further declares that freudian psychoanalysis is responsible for patients presenting themselves for analytic therapy tainted and confused by a cultural 'lag' in analytic sophistication. We are asked to believe that this 'lag', apparently, is the fault of orthodox psychoanalytic theory and practice. To my mind, psychoanalysis can be kept scientific only by full attention to our methodology, transference, dream interpretation, and resistance, that is, by the proper use of long-prove psychoanalytic theory and technique. Modifications of psychoanalytic technique are continually made; such changes, however, must be predicated on a deep knowledge o