At a time when Freudian psychoanalysis has increasingly come under siege, both its therapeutic usefulness and its status as a scientific discipline seriously questioned, what Freudian analyst could fail to be cheered by a collection of essays that claims to take as its focus the fact that “of the various belief systems that have emerged in the modern world, psychoanalysis is by far the most successful…How was this astonishing conquest of our thought and language accomplished, in a period well under a half a century, and unaided by special resources?” (p. 1). This assertion is taken from Ernest Gellner's contribution, “Psychoanalysis as a Social Institution.” By “modern world” Gellner means the middle and upper classes of Western society, and it is to this population that psychoanalysis provides “salvation” (p. 227) by helping them to understand human relationships. Gellner wishes he could support his astonishing assertion with a