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At the time of her death in 1970, Elizabeth Zetzel, with W. W. Meissner, was in the process of expanding her lectures and seminars for psychiatric residents, medical students, social workers, and other hospital personnel into the present volume. Their aim was to offer 'a clear, correct, informative, and intellectually challenging introduction to the basic concepts of psychoanalysis'. Granted that individual differences exist among analysts and that some of Zetzel's views—particularly with respect to the therapeutic alliance—have been controversial, the main objectives have been strikingly achieved. The work may be read with profit even by quite experienced analysts. Indeed, were it not for the assurance that the material was very well received by its primary audience, one might be inclined to wonder if it was not rather difficult to assimilate. The treatment of 'basic concepts' is fairly comprehensive. As a background for lectures and as a reference work, it is very useful and should encourage others to aspire to similar high standards in attempting to communicate with such audiences.
The application of psychoanalysis to psychiatry is undertaken on the basis of distinctions made between unconscious contents of the mind illuminated by analytic technique and broader efforts to conceive 'the development, structure, and function of the human mind in both its healthy and disturbed forms' (pp. 5-6). To achieve these aims, all facets of metapsychology as well as adaptation are considered unflinchingly. In addition, the history of psychoanalysis and of Freud himself is lucidly integrated. The organization and scope of the book may be gleaned from the headings of successive chapters: Understanding Anxiety, Repression, The Development Hypothesis (this is in close harmony with Erikson's 'epigenesis'), Narcissism, The Ego and Its Development, Object Relations, Neurotic Development and Analyzability, Approach to the Borderline Patient, and Psychoanalysis as Therapy, amo