Practice and Precept in Psychoanalytic Technique. Selected Papers of Rudolph M. Loewenstein.: (With an Introduction by Jacob A. Arlow.) New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1982. 240 Pp.

Rudolph M. Loewenstein's contributions to the clarification and advancement of psychoanalytic technique have been so simply and elegantly stated that the principles now appear obvious and correct. A careful examination of his subtle observations and explanations, as they appear in his selected papers on technique, will alert one to the evolutionary process in which Loewenstein took part and to the reader's own tendencies to embrace outdated conceptualizations and practices. This volume illuminates the remnants of cultural lag that interfere with appropriate interpretation and create stalemates in individual psychoanalyses.

Increased knowledge of ego functioning in the 1920's and especially in the 1930's led to a clarification of psychoanalytic theories and to changes in technique. Certain inconsistencies in conceptualization jarred the sensibilities of many clinicians and theoreticians. Heinz Hartmann, Ernst Kris, and Rodolph loewenstein set out to create a more compellingly harmonious structure without surrendering basic psychoanalytic insights. Kris once said that they were simply "straightening out" the contradictions or oversights