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This is a book about a psychoanalyst and his ideas about psychoanalysis. We are introduced to revolutionary/author Arnold Cooper and the quiet revolution in the book's first chapter, “The Impact on Clinical Work of the Analyst's Idealizations and Identifications.” With autobiographical candor and a probing attitude that permeates every page, Cooper reflects on his formative experiences and raises questions as
… part of an ongoing personal struggle to reassure myself that my thinking psychoanalytically wasn't totally eccentric. I was never certain that I did deep analysis as the socalled orthodox did …. Until quite recently I wasn't sure that they didn't know something vital that I didn't. It's possible that they did, although I think it is now clear that the world of orthodox self-assurance has collapsed. [p. 16]
In this remarkable essay written as recently as 1998 by a man whose career has spanned over fifty years, Cooper proceeds to expand upon some of the assumptions from the Freudian canon that he maintains have been “sanitized,” if not preserved entirely, claiming that “it was years before I developed real comfort with the idea that I was a psychoanalyst by any serious definition, even if I differed with the mainstream” (p. 18). Underlying Cooper's doubts about “belonging” include formative experiences from a childhood that witnessed injustices, contradictory parental attitudes (particularly toward religious practices in the family), and the unavailability of books in the household.
Music and his serious involvement with the clarinet provided an escape, and weekend visits to New York City gave Cooper glimpses of a vibrant world, where his enriched intellectual, musical, and social life provided a catalyst for his gravitation to the world of psychoanalytic ideas. His route to becoming a psychoanalyst was circuitous, winding through a small medical school in Utah with no department of psychiatry. This ostensible limitation provided him with an opportunity to int