You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
It was with a certain amount of misapprehension that I opened this book, since I had not always found myself in agreement with Arnold Goldberg in the past. As I read on, however, I found myself increasingly at ease and more and more in accord with what I was reading, although I cannot say that I agree with everything he espouses. Overall, however, it was a pleasure to read the book. Not only is it in its main essentials quite sensible, but it is also written in a style that is so lucid, laconic, elegant, and entertaining that it is eminently reader-friendly. I recommend it warmly.
Goldberg presents his argument clearly and relatively parsimoniously. Human beings, he indicates, are so complex, variable, and different from one another that it is self-deceptive to believe that any psychoanalytic point of view has all the answers or that it has completed its own development. If, as clinicians, we delude ourselves into believing that we know everything as we carry out our task of attempting to understand our patients and help them understand themselves, we might succeed in constructing an internally consistent set of beliefs about our patients (and ourselves), but it is likely to be off the mark. I quite agree with him.
The title Goldberg has chosen for his book is playful and whimsical. Freud never believed that he understood everything or that his conclusions were incontrovertible. He periodically referred to