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At the beginning of the last chapter of this book, the author, a prominent self psychologist psychoanalyst, states,
I am afraid that this may be seen as an old-fashioned book. It uses traditional and somewhat out-of-date ideas about psychological defenses and structure, transference and countertransference. In particular, it focuses on the concept of disavowal and its many other names. (p. 167)
These brief sentences should strike those familiar with self psychology as unusual in regard to the lack of terms more usually associated with that theory, such as selfobject, mirror transference, disillusionment rupture, and optimal gratification. In making these remarks, Arnold Goldberg undoubtedly anticipates some criticism of the ideas he puts forward in his latest book, but it is doubtful that he believes that he is really old-fashioned. Rather, it appears that he is attempting to stay within the traditions of psychoanalysis when approached as a science. He is aware of an increasing discontent among many psychoanalysts with the scientific approach Freud brought to his foray into understanding the human mind and its emotions in terms that resembled the then-prevailing physical sciences. His effort is to move beyond the contemporary conflict model of classical psychoanalysts whose efforts are aimed exclusively at the lifting of infantile repression with the resultant recovery of drive derivatives permanently sequestered, without the benefit of psychoanalysis, in the patient's