Oberndorf, C. P. A History of Psychoanalysis in America. [New York:  Grune and Stratton, 1953. Pp.  vii + 280, $5.00.]

It is often easier for a rich man to get into heaven, than for most historians to write fairly and objectively. The heat of partisan battle usually doesn't make for fairness. Dr. Oberndorf is, as always, cooly objective and scrupulously fair in this recent volume to both proponents and opponents of psychoanalysis. He is perhaps one of a very small number of Freudian “old guards” who has always maintained a scientific reserve and

open mind about the powers and shortcomings of analytic theory and practice. He is whole-heartedly an enthusiastic Freudian, but it has not yet, after 40 years, prevented him being honestly skeptical of all the claims made by too many of the Freudian analysts who fear to admit that there may be shortcomings.

This volume would be better entitled, “My Life and Hard Times in the Analytic Movement.” It is not really a formal “History”, but rather a warm, intimate, biographical account of psychoanalysis in this country as the author knew, observed and experienced it since 1909. This is more than history; it is a slice of life itself. Oberndorf is the “first generation” of analysts in this country. He writes about the beginnings and developments of psycholanalysis for the benefit of the “third generation” now coming into the picture. This is not a book tracing the revisions of Freudian theory; it is rather a narration of events. It remains a kind of companion to W. A. White's “Forty Years of Psychiatry” published in 1933. It is the best account, from an intimately personal view, of the movement in the last forty years in the USA. This book is written in a friendly, unpretentious, and undogmatic style; the reader moves easily from chapter to chapter almost with an eager interest to find out what comes next. The eighth chapter, on his recollections of Freud and analysis with him in Vienna in 1921-22, is one of the best in the book. The pages dealing with analytic practice between 1910-20 has the flavor of real adventure.

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