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Psychoanalytic Knowledge is an ambitious attempt to challenge the fundamental concepts of the theory of psychoanalysis. In the past decade, there has been an increasing interest in the basis of psychoanalytic evidence, the theory of scientific knowledge, and our
understanding of the psychoanalytic process. Brody has brought together his psychoanalytic and sociocultural understanding of the subject to define, re-examine, challenge, and offer alternative hypotheses to what we have come to know as psychoanalytic theory. The book is not easy reading. It should be reserved for serious students of the subject who have a sincere interest in examining fundamental theoretical issues. There are few clinical references and most of these are anthropologic, although they do add compelling data to the arguments.
Brody's approach is to lay out his basic understanding of psychoanalysis (as a clinical treatment, a scientific research modality, and a contribution toward developing a general psychology) and to place it in a cultural, economic context. The repeated observation is that the field of study, the individual, is influenced by the observer. In the last chapter of the book, in which he examines the convergence of psychoanalysis and anthropology, similar observations are made regarding the role of the ethnologist. The effect is often jarring. It leaves one doubting what we have come to understand as readily explainable psychic and societal phenomena in terms of our conventional theory. In a very interesting chapter, Brody examines the education of the psychoanalyst, who is influenced by the subculture into which he gains inclusion, and the effects of this on how he functions as a clinician and scientist.
This approach paves the way for the major thesis of the work. Mainly citing the writings of the anthropologist, Edward Sapir, and the linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, Brody seeks to alter and redefine both topographic and structural theory. He sees the concept of dr