Understanding Freud: The Man and His Ideas edited by Emanuel E. Garcia New York:  New York University Press, 1992,  xiii + 174 pp., $35.00

This lovely little volume of fewer than 200 pages is the result of a symposium held in Philadelphia in the fall of 1990. It is full of large insights and small pearls, both equally delightful. Yet as a volume for understanding Freud, it does not quite succeed in living up to the grandiosity of its titular claim. This is, rather, a volume for those who, as Clifford Yorke says in his introduction, love

Freud and his work. It presents a basic knowledge of Freud and his work and thus enhances the pleasure of reading the contributions of five Freud scholars and four superior discussants of each paper. Dr. Garcia's paper, the last in the volume, stands without discussion.

My favorite contribution in the volume is Robert Paul's striking elaboration of Freud's “Culture Books” (Totem and Taboo, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Civilization and its Discontents, and Moses and Monotheism). He concludes that genetic predispositions as well as cultural traditions are basic to understanding an individual's nuclear fantasy. And, further, there are two social axes representing intergenerational transmission of information—the genetic, sexual one and the nonreproductive one. Paul points out that in religion, instinctual conflict unites surly individuals into an enduring society; in the individual the same conflict rages to nobody's benefit.

Thomas Wolman, an Associate Member of the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Society and a clinical faculty member at Jefferson Medical College, discusses Paul's presentation. He emphasizes how culture interacts with psyche so that, for example, collective religious life reaches such a peak that individual neurosis is unnecessary. In particular, advancing civilization so encroaches on individual sexual life that there is a social and legal demand that there can only be a single type of sexual life for everyone.

Albrecht Hirschmüller, from Germany, gives us fascinating information concerning Theodor Meynert and the devastating effect of the pe