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If one tells the truth one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
To paraphrase an old nursery rhyme: when it was good it was very good, and when it was bad, it was still quite good. One can apply this adage to M. Guy Thompson's latest book. Like Lacan, Thompson has us return to Freud, particularly Freud of the pre-structural model. Unlike Lacan, who, it seems, sees Freud's genius in his ability to anticipate Lacan's thinking, Thompson has us reread Freud through the eyes of existential philosophy.
This is an important book, one that challenges the “techniques” of psychoanalysis that we accept prima facie as being at the core of our clinical method. Like many major works, however, it is also uneven. The shortcomings—and I will discuss these first—are perhaps derivative of Thompson's philosophical orientation and belief that psychoanalysis is part of philosophy, and not a general psychology. These flaws should not, however, detract from the overall gestalt, one of recapturing the power of the psychoanalytic encounter and the inherently human(e) quality of that interaction.
Although the argument can be made that psychoanalysis is a philosophical discourse, concerned with truth and ethics, one would have to disregard Freud's statements to the contrary as well