Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Science. An Annual of Integrative and Interdisciplinary Studies. Volume III, 1974: Edited by Leo Goldberger and Victor H. Rosen. New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1975. 557 pp.

The third volume of this annual is the equal of the first two, which is high praise indeed. Promising new psychoanalytic annuals have appeared from time to time; after good beginnings, most have deteriorated fairly quickly. But there have been exceptions and it seems likely that this will be one of them, that it may in fact be able to sustain a tradition of excellence.

It would take a renaissance intelligence to be able to fairly evaluate all of the sophisticated papers in the present volume. They range widely: basic philosophical issues, a challenging new theoretical model of the mind, specimens of Luborsky's and Gottschalk's controlled research on recorded analyses, papers on sleep and dreams, more traditional clinical and developmental contributions, and finally a careful critique of the theories of Jacques Lacan.

Although readers may expect integration in specific papers, they will not find much integration of the whole. In the process of trying to reach their own conclusions, they will often find themselves immersed in strong disagreements. This is as it should be; the papers often enough powerfully disagree with each other. In fact, this is what provides the reason for the annual's existence. Once outside basic clinical theory, psychoanalysts find themselves in a jungle of ideas as diverse as those of neurophysiology on one end of the spectrum and the "deep structures" of structuralism on the other, biology to one side and philosophy on the other, "science" here and "humanism" there. There are controversies without end, and they need good forums.

Arbitrarily, four papers will be selected for comment here: one presenting a new psychoanalytic model purporting to be based on what is known about neurophysiology; another on consciousness grounded in a different version of what is known by the neurophysiologists; a long critique of Lacan's work; and finally a post-humous