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The authors of this slim volume have an ambitious agenda, nothing less than a program for the overhaul of psychoanalysis by laying bare what they see as its “fundamental contradictions” (p. 1 and passim). They say they write as “ardent advocates” (p. 6) of psychoanalysis—Rand is a professor of French literature and Torok is a French psychoanalyst—and thereby hope their criticisms will be taken seriously. Their language is severe: “Psychoanalysis might as well disappear if it is incapable of escaping from [its] oppressive dogma” (p. xi). To lend credence to their call for psychoanalytic reconfiguration, Rand and Torok conclude their work with a theory they believe explains “the impostures, the lies and deceits, the dissimulation and secrets … that have punctuated … the entire history of the psychoanalytic movement” (p. x).
The first area Rand and Torok take on is dream interpretation. They argue that Freud's catalog of universal symbols, supposed “remnants of ancient or primitive modes of thought” (p. 22), is incompatible with “the inquiry into the personal psychic sense of dreams” (p. 16). Their indictment, they add, is not just one of theory, because an analysand's knowledge of symbols could lead to the production of erroneous associations, undermining the dreamer's individuality. The heavily sexual nature of Freud's symbols especially troubles them because it, too, takes away the dreamer's interpretive freedom. They conclude that Freud's decision to interpret dreams through a combination of universal symbols and the dreamer's personal associations is contradictory and “debilitates … psychoanalytic theory and practice” (p. 23).
Next Rand and Torok turn to the currently hot topic of whether