Clinical Understanding by Gail S. Reed Northvale, NJ:  Jason Aronson, 1996,  xxii + 290 pp., $27.00 paper

Gail Reed brings an intelligent and incisive perspective to every topic she approaches. She presents the best case for a modern interpretation of a classic psychoanalytic point of view. Reed acknowledges the limitations of clinical theory and metapsychology that have made us more “modest” in our claims, while she points out how the very caution of current-day analysts imposes least on patients or texts. Reed also brings renewed life to psychoanalytic language, particularly the concepts of reconstruction and transference neurosis.

Clinical Understanding is a collection of Reed's papers written over the past two decades. Readers who follow the major psychoanalytic journals will have encountered many of these papers before. Others papers, especially those on applied analysis, were published elsewhere or given as talks. Reed's point of view is consistent throughout, and there are certain themes she pursues recurrently. The reader should not expect that there is one central thesis, however; this is a set of collected papers at midcareer. The volume is divided into two parts. The first six chapters deal with topics in clinical theory, amply illustrated by case material. The latter seven chapters are concerned with two areas: critiques of self psychology and essays on applied psychoanalysis. Most practicing analysts will find Part I more compelling and relevant; scholars in the humanities will find the last chapters of special interest. The papers on self psychology are part of a debate that now seems dated, or at least quiescent. Reed provides brief studies of several authors (Voltaire, Diderot), but she is most interested in issues in psychoanalytic criticism. As in her clinical essays, she argues for a complex, antiformulaic use of psychoanalysis in approaching literature.

What is fascinating, enlightening, and at times frustrating in Reed's work is her struggle between precepts received from Freud