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This is a superb book that bears vivid testimony to the renascence of psychoanalysis in West Germany after a long period of stagnation directly traceable to its persecution and virtual extinction during the period of the Third Reich. By 1938, Freud, aging and mortally ill, had fled to England and many of his most creative followers had emigrated to the U.S., where psychoanalysis began to flourish in unprecedented fashion. As has now been documented, psychoanalysis continued a certain underground existence in Hitler's Germany, but in a real sense it had expired. Following the war, psychoanalysis in Germany was slow to revive. In the U.S., psychoanalysis had largely become institutionalized and ritualized; it had withdrawn to its quasireligious training institutes and lost contact with empirical research. Many psychoanalytic journals had become archaic and baroque. Thus one might also expect to encounter these trends in the writings of Thomä and Kächele.
Instead, these two authors present a critical and refreshing treatise of psychoanalysis at its best. Not only are Thomä and Kächele thoroughly conversant with the contemporary literature, but, unlike most American authors, they have forged a connection with empirical research. At the University of Ulm (West Germany) they have created one of the foremost psychoanalytic research centers and have themselves become leaders in empirical research. Their approach is a far cry from the venerated method of clinical observation in the consulting room. Psychoanalytic process research, as it has been fostered at Ulm, is undoubtedly one of the most exciting and promising advances in psychoanalysis, and has been placed squarely in the growing domain of psychotherapy