Madness on the Couch: Blaming the Victim in the Heyday of Psychoanalysis by Edward Dolnick New York:  Simon and Schuster, 1998,  368 pp., $25.00

As psychoanalysis celebrates the centenary of its birth, it is timely to reflect on its impact over the course of this century for the relief of emotional and mental suffering, of all description. By any measure, the success of psychoanalytic treatment strategies over the entire range of diagnostic categories is a qualified one, if for no other reason than that there is little agreement among psychoanalysts as to what psychopathology entails, as well as unresolved (and apparently unresolvable) notions of treatment aims and resolution. Once the “handmaiden” of American psychiatry, the public's perception of psychoanalytic treatment has plummeted over the second half of this century from its reputation as the premier treatment method for all forms of mental malaise to that of an increasingly marginalized profession whose very survival is now in question.

A compelling and thoughtful chronicle of this sudden shift in the fortunes and viability of talking therapy is not only timely but much-needed, so when I began to read Madness On The Couch by Edward Dolnick I hoped that his account of this story would provide such a service. Much to my disappointment, it does not. Instead, this book is yet one more diatribe against psychoanalysis and its practitioners, the latest addition to an increasingly long list of “Freud-bashers” (read: psychoanalyst-bashers) that have filled bookstore shelves over the last 20 years. This is a curious example of the genre, which pretends to be balanced but is in fact a stream-of-consciousness, if engagingly written, litany of complaints of Hunter Thompson-esque proportions, constantly searching for and ferreting out, if not commies-under-the-bed (Dolnick actually compares psychoanalysts to 1940s-era communists who refused to believe what Stalin was up to!), quacks and con artists intent on passing themselves off as miracle workers who profess to