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Charting the historical development of psychoanalytic theory and technique through an examination of landmark cases not only makes good clinical sense but it should make fascinating reading as well. The scope and depth of such a project is enormous, to say the least, since it promises to systematically trace our increasingly sophisticated understandings of manifest clinical phenomena within the context of cases treated by master clinicians, and to critique both the theoretical and technical issues revealed by these cases from the perspective of contemporary psychoanalytic thought. It is to such a task that Gerald Schoenewolf has directed himself in his two volume work, Turning Points in Analytic Therapy. This set of books, which takes as its point of departure the fact that “the great discoveries of psychoanalysis have usually come from the great cases” (vol. 2, p. ix), both summarizes and reviews a broad range of cases treated by well known therapists—broadly definable as psychoanalysts. There is much to be pleased about in this work since case histories are intrinsically interesting and valuable to clinicians. However, there is much that is disappointing about this work as well since it falls short of the systematic effort which such an ambitious undertaking would seem to require.
Schoenewolf appears to have eschewed a more classical definition of psychoanalysis in his selection of case material and instead, to have formulated his work in such a way as to appeal to those with a wide range of clinical and theoretical perspectives. The