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The original German edition of this book, which created such a sensation in the realm of philosophy and psychology, was previously reviewed in these columns. The work is so well known by psychoanalysts that it is only necessary here to mention the English translation which is an excellent one (name of translator not given), but it is difficult to refrain from making a critical comment. It is to be regretted that the learned exponent of the “birth trauma” which is so valuable in many respects, at least as a research focus, should see fit to include in it every manifestation of human activity (normal, neurotic, psychotic) under the sun and to conceive that all thought and action represents either an attempt to reconstruct the intrauterine situation or to escape the “memories” of the traumatic birth event. If such a concept should be universally accepted analytic research would cease or suffer paralysis and in fact the author in his chapter on “therapeutic aspect,” commenting on the technic of an analysis states in part, “Analysis is now in the position to free itself to an extensive degree from the work of investigation, since we know from the outset not only the whole content of the Unconscious and the psychical mechanisms, but also what for the time being is the final element, the primal trauma.” While the birth trauma theory explains many phenomena more satisfactorily than any other concept has yet been able to do, it has been expended to the outer margins of meaning.
Lewis