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Dr. Morris Eagle is an established, respected psychoanalytic scholar, practitioner, and researcher/theoretician. A review of his extensive bibliography reveals that he has been passionate about psychoanalysis for his entire career (he admits to more than six decades) and has written extensively from many nuanced vantage points. He has often voiced thoughtful criticisms of the profession, the practice, and the theory of psychoanalysis; but such criticisms come, as he explains, from a place of profound love for psychoanalysis.
In this two-volume set, Eagle presents an examination of psychoanalysis as a theory of human nature, mental functioning, and personality, largely refraining from a discussion of psychoanalysis as a treatment. Supplementing the 2012 Textbook of Psychoanalysis (Gabbard, Litowitz, & Williams) with some informal polling of colleagues, Eagle has identified a set of most-frequently cited core concepts that he selects for detailed scrutiny. In the Classical volume he has selected Unconscious Processes, The Oedipus Complex, Inner conflict, and the concept of defense for a detailed analysis consisting of three weighty questions: (1) What is the evidence for the concept? (2) In light of available evidence and accumulated criticism and arguments, should the particular concept be retained or discarded? And (3) If a concept merits retention, based on the above scrutiny, then how should it be modified or reformulated to solidify its inclusion as critical to psychoanalytic education going forward? In the companion Contemporary volume, Eagle takes the same