This volume of The Annual, like its predecessors, serves the useful function of presenting papers written from points of view somewhat apart from the American psychoanalytic mainstream. In some cases, one or more discussions are appended to a paper, a format that works especially well with contributions that intend to be challenging or revisionist; these discussions help the reader identify and place in perspective controversial aspects of the material.

The first section contains two theoretical studies. In “An Epistemology of Transference,” John Gedo emphasizes that the psychoanalytic observer cannot help but influence the thing observed. One must agree with Gedo when he comments, “Perhaps all that I have said…is actually self-evident—an application, after the passage of half a century, of Heisenberg's insight about the epistemological constraints on physical experimentation in the field of psychoanalysis” (p. 7). There is certainly value in pointing out the various, easily disavowed