As edited by León Grinberg, this collection of essays, derived from the 1987-1988 conferences of the course in psychoanalysis at the Madrid Ateneo, is a sophisticated, delightful, unusually profound introduction to psychoanalytic theory, history, and thinking.

The Madrid Ateneo, a prestigious cultural organization that was once a forum for the biologist Ramón y Cajal, the philosophers Ortega y Gasset and Unamuno, has seen a sort of Renaissance in the years since the death of Franco. It is in the spirit of that Renaissance that the Ateneo offered Grinberg the opportunity to organize the conferences, which were given by members of the IPA, mostly from the Madrid Psychoanalytical Association. (Since then, the Ateneo has taken the unusual step of providing a permanent Chair in Psychoanalysis, whose first occupant is also León Grinberg.)