Léon Wurmser has set out to replace certain current psychoanalytic concepts of narcissism and structural narcissistic deficits with a much older, but seldom explicated line of investigation: the study of the affect of shame and its role in the conflicts of the psyche. One hopes that he has published this book at the right moment, i.e., at a time when disillusionment may have set in with parts of recent theories of narcissism, and the professional community may be ready for an original form of an old but useful paradigm. The author, who is erudite and well versed in the history of psychoanalytic thought, may be the person to achieve this goal.

Wurmser himself is more cautious than this in his assertions, stating that he wishes only to change the perspective a little, that