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In his latest book, The Mystery of Things, Christopher Bollas argues that the importance of free association in psychoanalytic technique and its application to Western thought has never been fully explicated. To remedy this oversight, he presents his theory of free association in three sections in this book. The first section is a theoretical critique of psychoanalytic theory; the second section contains clinical case material illustrating how free association and interpretation change psychic structure; the last section is a compendium of various essays dealing with creativity. This is a heroic task given the small size of this book (only 195 pages of text). Almost half of the chapters have already been published as articles or book chapters in various psychoanalytic publications and cover a variety of topics, such as language, sexuality and the body, and the arts. Although this masterful clinician discusses these compelling topics, he does not present the unifying thread showing how these subjects relate to free association until the final three pages of the text. Unfortunately, this hinders its relevance because the reader is uncertain of the relationship of chapters.
With his inimitable writing style, Bollas is at times turgid and abstruse, eloquent and seductive. Daunting as this may seem—for this book is certainly not for the novice—he captivates the reader with his