The subtitle, “New Psychoanalytic Perspectives,” is exactly what this book offers. Its ten chapters, written by prominent psychoanalysts, cover a broad spectrum ranging from Kleinian perspectives, to structural factors, to object relations, to group and social phenomena.

The editors begin with a short historical survey that, as might be expected, focuses on the Schreber case, Freud's most comprehensive exploration of paranoia. They discuss and dispute certain controversial issues, such as the essential role Freud ascribed to homosexuality and how paranoid symptoms are largely projective defenses against homosexual impulses. The editors create a vista that goes beyond psychodynamic conflict and libido theory. They express implicit expectations that explorations in paranoid phenomena occur in other frames of reference, which are better integrated with modern perspectives that stress psychic structure and development