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This book, in which several chapters are extracts from earlier publications by the author, may be thought of as an extreme example of the opposition to Freud's repeatedly stated view that psychoanalysis is a natural science. The opinion of Kurtz is that psychoanalysis is “an art precisely as that notion is understood in the dada-surrealist-Zen tradition” (p. 234). He admits that this concept “can present more difficulties in a country where the scientific/ego psychology ideals are strong and the philosophical tradition of conceptual analysis has overthrown the once-central place of aesthetics” (pp. 234-235). It is not clear to me in which country aesthetics had a “once-central place”; especially because he seems to be referring in the quotation to our materialistic United States, I found this assertion confusing.
The book contains a number of statements flatly pronounced; they are the author's opinions, and his writing is liberally sprinkled with famous names from psychoanalysis, poetics, philosophy, literature, and an untranslated quotation (p. 13) allegedly from Artaud (no reference is given). To give an idea of the author's approach, I will simply list some of his contentions. “The generalizing truths of science are trivial; poetry is the only source of important truth…the analytic method—like the poetic one—proceeds through unknowing” (p. 6). Empathy, according to the author, “must remain undefined” (p. 13), yet we are told that the self psychologist “attempts to attune himself [sic] empathically to the patient, not only to promote a certain kind of transference but also because the attunement itself is seen as curative” (p. 228). The logic of this is that an undefined notion is curative in psychoanalysis. The author claims, “When it does not try to be a science and, abandoning an impossible objectivity, embraces the poetic