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The well-known (but little remembered) saying, “Even dwarfs, on the shoulders of giants, can see farther” is the key to the basic position in this book. Freud is the father and the giant; psychoanalysis is an ongoing process in which Freud's method remains fundamental, but it should not be interpreted as a tyrannical, closed system.
Analysts need to work through their relation to Freud and free it from “any transferential aspects” (p. 3). One recurring theme throughout is the view of all persons and works as fallible and historically placed. The author has no liking for Freud detractors whose exaggerated assertions are often absurd, but he does discuss flaws and errors in Freud's work.
Speziale-Bagliacca sketches out the Eissler-Roazen controversy about the Tausk case and explains that some chapters of Paul Roazen's work Freud and His Followers provided him with valuable material about “unexplored regions” (p. 13) in the relations that formed around Freud. The importance of Melanie Klein's contribution is particularly stressed: she, in a sense, like Freud himself, “raised doubts about everything” (p. 18). The author then concentrates mainly on the case of the Wolf Man and on Analysis Terminable and Interminable. An underlying theme is Freud's depression, which he may never have succeeded in