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R. D. Hinshelwood has created a thoughtful and stimulating work in which he makes an important contribution to the understanding of the professional ethics of psychoanalysis. Author of A Dictionary of Kleinian Thought, the writer presents his ideas in a clear and concise manner. As a result, the monograph can also serve as an introduction to modern Kleinian ideas. His empathic and appropriate use of clinical examples supports the theoretical exegesis. Because the author uses and elaborates the same clinical cases, the reader meets Hinshelwood the analyst as well as Hinshelwood the theoretician.
Although he refers to medical and psychiatric ethics as well as to philosophy, his essential argument is psychoanalytic. A major goal of psychoanalysis, he believes, is integration. Actions which enhance integration are ethical; those which do not are unethical. Integration is a fundamental ethical principle which underlies both autonomy and rationality and is associated with the psychological function of self-reflection.
Torture, coercion, and brainwashing have aims which differ fundamentally from the aims of psychoanalysis. The goals of torture, coercion, and brainwashing are to destroy the personality's cohesiveness and to render the individual vulnerable to outside control. The purpose of psychoanalysis is to integrate; the purpose of torture is to disintegrate. As the author writes, “an influence on another person is more ethical