This volume, the fifth in a series by some of the same group of authors, leaves us with more questions than answers. For more than a psychoanalytic generation now, it has been commonplace to demolish a Procrustean couch view of the field. But what type of the many other beds available should be chosen? The authors seem to suggest that the patient and the analyst will work together, make their own bed, and then lie in it. Perhaps clinical theory, as well as metapsychology, has passed its endpoint—since the authors are largely ready to toss conventional principles and technique aside.

This slender book follows in the line of deconstructionism, similar to efforts made in various fields of the humanities. It presents its intellectual arguments quite well, but then leaves open exactly what remains,