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The small monograph under consideration is the product of two of the most skillful psychotherapists in the psychoanalytic field, and from the very beginning, as would be expected by those who are acquainted with the various literary contributions of these authors, the reader is brought into contact with a forceful, critical and constructive discussion of the psychoanalytic technic from the special viewpoint of two of its most widely known practitioners.
Among the many features brought up for consideration in connection with the unconscious and the methods of investigating it, one may single out for special mention, as having been particularly well presented, a few topics such as (1) the process of overcoming the chief resistance in the analytic situation,—the infantile anxiety—(2) the transference of the libido of the infantile fixation to that of the analytic fixation which becomes a substitute for the neurosis, reproduces all of the pathologic fixations and which renders it necessary for the analyst to set a definite period of time for completing the last part of the treatment, (3) the manifestation of the castration complex occurring as a negative oedipus reaction in the reproduction of the oedipus situation; this in the case of the male meaning the removal of the libido from the mother object and identification with her; in the case of the female a similar occurrence in connection with the father, the identification obtaining in the sense of keeping the infantile craving for a penis—and the whole complex serving to avoid the principal oedipus rôle, and (4) the setting free of the libido fixation in the factor of experience, in which must be considered the analytic situation which has again exposed the patient to infantile traumata and the parental imago through identification of the analyst with the father or mother, a state of affairs which cannot exist permanently if the patient is to finally establish a satisfactory adult ego ideal.