The Idea of the Past: History, Science, and Practice in American Psychoanalysis by Leonard Jonathan Lamm New York:  New York University Press, 1993,  xix + 310 pp., $35.00

Leonard Lamm has written a decidedly ironic book. The irony became salient for me as I compared my experience reading Lamm's book with that of a previous reviewer, whose praise is quoted on the book's dust jacket. The reviewer indicates Lamm has a conversational and witty style that animates the difficult subject matter of the book. I did not find Lamm's style that way at all. The comic, romantic, and tragic visions of the past were deeply overshadowed by Lamm's paradoxical attitude toward the relevance of presented psychoanalytic conceptions of the past for clinical practice.

I read and reread the text. I carefully reviewed my underlinings throughout the pages. Yet I kept returning to the preface and acknowledgments of the book. Usually I glance at this part of the book to see the sources of influence on the author. Lamm creates the atmosphere of T. S. Eliot's (1943) Four Quartets: