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The best introduction to this densely-argued analysis of the concept of mental objects is provided by the brief Conclusion. In it, the author summarises how he has traced the concept of a mental object from being an aspect of the drives, as it was in early Freud, and shows how it was added to and made more complex by the growing influence of both the developmental approach characteristic of ego-psychology, and the more active concept of mental object as phantasy. The book sticks as closely as it can to elucidating this single, very important, concept, whilst alluding briefly to the implications that ways of seeing it have for the whole body of psychoanalytic theory of which it is one of the basic building-blocks. Given the inherent complexity and abstraction of its subject-matter, the style is exemplary - clear, concise, and with a wealth of bibliographical references.
Meir Perlow says, with justice, that the
… aim of this delineation, and of the historical survey and the discussion of theoretical issues that led up to it, is to further our understanding of the plethora of ways in which the mind structures its interactions with people.
He also states that he has merely tried to map the different ideas of various theorists, and the ties and differences between them, rather than prefer one to another — but this seems not quite so true. His sympathies seem to lie more with the ego-psychological tradition, perhaps because this is where more careful and scrupulous attention has been given to the meanings of terms and their theoretical implications, than has been done with the experience-near and descriptive use of terms, which is more characteristic of the object-relations tradition, and of writers such as Kohut and Winnicott who put the self and orientations to the self at the centre of their work. I think that he is justified, though, in pointing out that the vivid and convincing clinical descriptions of the latter two groups are often not theories at all, but ca