Antonie Ladan is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in the Netherlands who writes compelling accounts of the analytic experience that are richly illustrated with clinical material and thoroughly referenced. This short book deals with the implicit relational patterns that produce automatic reactions of which we are mostly unaware, but can be dealt with in psychoanalytic treatment so that they are recognized and enable change. Although the translation from Dutch at times seems just a little bit off, the content is interesting and intellectually rewarding.

The title, On Psychoanalysis, Disillusion, and Death: Dead Certainties, is slightly off-putting, but on reflection, does convey some of the scope