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PB 9(2):185-188 (1998)

Textbook of Psychoanalysis edited by Edward Nersessian and Richard G. Kopff, Jr. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1996, xv + 726 pp., $110.00

Author: Dale M. Moyer PhD

Abstract

These days, I suppose, we are all travelers through the pluralism of psychoanalysis. What exactly is this terrain of diversity (Wallerstein, 1988, 1995)? Each year the domain of psychoanalytic thought seems to change to some degree, or some aspect of psychoanalysis regains the ground it had lost the decade or year or so before. The flux can generate nostalgia. I am reminded of how Joseph Brodsky (1995), who won the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature,

began a recent essay entitled, “A Place as Good as Any”:

The more one travels, the more complex one's sense of nostalgia becomes. In a dream, depending on one's mania or supper or both, one is either pursued or pursues somebody through a crumpled maze of streets, lanes, and alleyways belonging to several places at once; one is in a city that does not exist on the map. A panicky flight originating as a rule in one's hometown is likely to land one helpless under the poorly lit archway in the town of one's last year's, or the year before's, sojourn. It is so much so that eventually your traveler finds himself unwittingly sizing up every locale he encounters for its potential value as a backdrop for his nightmare. (p. 35)

The title of Nersessian and Kopff's edited book evoked nostalgia in me. In my mind, the title called up a history of books with a similar focus (e.g., Nunberg, 1955; Waelder, 1960; Brenner, 1974). My hope was that Nersessian and Kopff would provide a more up-to-date, “standardized” map of the current landscape of psychoanalysis.

Nersessian and Kopff's map is divided into 21 chapters, unevenly distributed among five general categories. The five major sections of the Textbook cover psychoanalytic theory, psychopathology, treatment, research, and timely issues of interest to psychoanalysts. The editors provide a brief introduction to each major section, and each chapter has a different author or set of authors. Four chapters constitute the first section, which focuses on psychoanalytic theories of the mind. The ps

PB 9(2):185-188 (1998)

Textbook of Psychoanalysis edited by Edward Nersessian and Richard G. Kopff, Jr. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1996, xv + 726 pp., $110.00

Author: Dale M. Moyer PhD

Abstract

began a recent essay entitled, “A Place as Good as Any”:

The more one travels, the more complex one's sense of nostalgia becomes. In a dream, depending on one's mania or supper or both, one is either pursued or pursues somebody through a crumpled maze of streets, lanes, and alleyways belonging to several places at once; one is in a city that does not exist on the map. A panicky flight originating as a rule in one's hometown is likely to land one helpless under the poorly lit archway in the town of one's last year's, or the year before's, sojourn. It is so much so that eventually your traveler finds himself unwittingly sizing up every locale he encounters for its potential value as a backdrop for his nightmare. (p. 35)