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Harold Blum's introductory essay honoring Dr. Rangell, Jacob Arlow's personal memoir of him, and F. Robert Rodman's masterful essay tracing some lines of development of Rangell's thought open this compendious, 26-chapter volume.
Rodman's chapter, “Leo Rangell and the Integrity of Psychoanalysis,” is a fine example of an intellectual history essay. While it is understated and reportorial in tone, Rodman's successful work of synthesis is apparent; the reader can learn new things from the author's selection and highlighting of Rangell's wide-ranging and complex ideas.
From this point follow 22 original essays. (The 26th chapter is Dr. Rangell's extensive bibliography.) Especially as integrity, attempts at internal consistency, and fusion of opposites toward resolution rather than eclecticism are all applauded as hallmarks of Rangell's work, one would have hoped that the editors had provided this book with some manifest organizational structure—at least some grouping of the various essays. They did not do so; hence, paradoxically, the most serious flaw of this volume is that it has no core. It is 22 separate essays. Some, however, are well worth the read.
This is true of Weinshel's “On Inconsolability,” a beautiful clinical paper. While acknowledging a thorny definitional problem—
it is not easy to define precisely what inconsolability is. At times, it appears to have the structure and genesis of a symptom, at other times that of a mood or the mourning process. In some cases, the defensive elements are most conspicuous; in others, the inconsolability seems to be the nodal point of a complex character
Page 324structure. In most of my cases, the clinical picture suggests a mixture of a number of the above. (p. 65)
—resolving it is not his purpose here. Instead, he shows us how he analyzes and thereby sheds light on the phenomenon in question.
Charles Brenner's contribution, “Some Remarks on the Analysis of Dreams and of Neurotic Symptoms,” articulates important technical recommendati