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Morris Eagle's recently published book represents an ambitious undertaking—in fact, I can imagine no project more ambitious than trying to discern and make audible to the rest of us, an underlying, unifying melody in the cacophonies of contemporary psychoanalytic discourse and then making the case for our going forward in some kind of harmony. Eagle joins notable interdisciplinary scholars (e.g., Kandel, 2012; Solms, 2021; the late Jaak Panksepp, Panksepp & Biven, 2012) in viewing psychoanalysis as the most comprehensive theory of human psychology. He renews Freud's effort to create not simply a therapy but a theory of the mind, a project once pursued by ego psychologists such as David Rapaport and Heinz Hartmann.
Eagle is the right person to do this: He is among our community's finest critical thinkers, one of a small number of psychoanalysts for whom the phrase “encyclopedic knowledge” is not hyperbole. He has a firm grasp on the history of psychoanalytic theorizing and has also mastered a wealth of relevant empirical studies. Book-jacket endorsements are in their nature enthusiastic, but in this case, praise comes from readers not noted for gushing. Peter Fonagy hails the book as “a virtuoso achievement,” Glen Gabbard calls it “extraordinary,” Paolo Migone brands it “a classic” (Migone), and Jerome Wakefield finds it “dazzlingly brilliant and breathtaking.” I agree: It is a scholarly tour de force.
Readers familiar with Eagle's previous work will recognize his signature style of framing a critical issue, evaluating the internal coherence of theories germane to the question at hand, considering relevant evidence, dissecting arguments that seem to him facile or inconsistent with the data he has examined and explicated, and drawing reasonable conclusions. The book lays out the basis for the author's convictions that “an expanded and revitalized ego psychology constitutes the strongest foundation for the development of a general psychoanalytic theory of mind,” and that