Briefly Noted

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY OF NEUROSIS 50th Anniversary Edition by Otto Fenichel with an introduction and epilogue by Leo Rangell New York: Norton, 1996, xx + 705 pp., $42.50.

What better person to have written the introduction and epilogue to the 50th anniversary edition of Fenichel's monumental achievement than Leo Rangell. In his epilogue Rangell reminds us of the “golden-age” of psychoanalysis from the end of World War II to the mid-60s when the Freudian text supported by Fenichel's opus exerted a profound influence. Rangell details the reversal of this influence and the rapid growth of different theoretical models but concludes with the hopeful note that a more open-minded attitude toward differences is emerging.

For those whose psychoanalytic training began in the 50s or 60s, Fenichel and Freud are a lasting influence and this anniversary publication, while it may evoke some nostalgia, is a powerful reminder of the effect upon psychoanalysis of these two intellectual giants.

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY OF THE CHILD Volume 50 edited by Albert J. Solnit, Peter B. Neubauer, Samuel Abrams and A. Scott Dowling New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995, vi + 435 pp., $55.00.

This 50th edition (actually the 49th since volumes 3 and 4 were combined) attests again to the quality of this series. Most of the papers do relate to the “child” and those on psychoanalytic theory are excellent. Included are Clifford Yorke's plea for the retention of Freud's metapsychological concepts as fundamental and indispensable, Judith Guss Teichholz's paper exploring Loewald's concept of positive neutrality, and Per R. Anthi's on resistance analysis. There are some excellent clinical contributions and four fine papers on development. In the area of applied psychoanalysis there is Anne Adelman's paper on the transmission of holocaust narratives; Jules Glenn's analysis of Wordsworth's Ode: Intimations of Immortality is excellent as is William Jeffrey's discussion of Freud and the poet Hilda Dooli