The Language of Psycho-Analysis: By J. Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis. Translated by D. Nicholson-Smith. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1973. 510 pp.

The authors of this volume have deliberately and successfully chosen to discuss and analyze the conceptual equipment of psychoanalysis—concepts that have gradually evolved—to account for its discoveries. Originally conceived by Daniel Lagache in 1937, the plan was carried to fruition by Laplanche and Pontalis in 1967. As described in the Foreword, the book deals not with everything that psychoanalysis seeks to explain but rather with the tools it uses in doing so.

Each of the more than five hundred entries offers a definition and a commentary. The definition seeks to sum up the concept's accepted meaning (or meanings) as elaborated from its strict usage in psychoanalytic theory. The commentary presents the origins and development of the term; it also contains a critical portion and attempts to explicate the essence of the concept (including a thorough review of the references in the Standard Edition and the Gesammelte Werke). The authors describe their method under three headings: historical, structural, and problematic. They particularly emphasize a historical approach, discussing the origins of each concept and the basic stages in its evolution; this, in turn, illuminates and clarifies the fundamental meanings, linkages, and interrelationships between the terms. Indications of structural relationships and interpretations