Rescuing Psychoanalysis from Freud and other Essays in Re-Vision, by Peter L. Rudnytsky. The History of Psychoanalysis Series,  Karnac Books, London, 2011,  188 pp., $20.69.

The essay entitled “Rescuing Psychoanalysis from Freud” is only one of the seven chapters of this delightful book, but it serves well as a characterizing title for the whole book. Rudnytsky acknowledges Freud's genius. While critical, he is not a Freud-basher; he thinks of himself as “an adherent of Psychoanalysis.” He embraces psychoanalysis in all of its variations, as it has the potential of fusing the truths of the arts with those of the sciences and thus offering, in his words, “an unsurpassed window into the human mind.” From his college days on, while aiming to be a professor of English literature, he also immersed himself in psychoanalytic studies at Columbia and Yale. He is now Professor of English at the University of Florida and a visiting scholar in Psychoanalytic Studies at Emory University. There he is involved in an effort to create a Ph.D. program in psychoanalytic studies, which includes clinical training as well as studies in the humanities. An appendix of this book records an interview with a kindred soul, Eric Kandel, who is known for his research on the biology of mind. His studies bring together the sciences, which are concerned with the natural world, and the humanities, which are concerned with the meaning of human experience.

Unfortunately, psychoanalysis evolved in isolation. Freud had no access to the universities and, being an outsider, developed psychoanalysis not as a discipline but as a movement over which he presided with sovereign authority. With his claim that psychoanalysis was his creation subject to his authority, Freud, Rudnytsky points out, tragically