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For a long time the myth prevailed—and in some quarters still prevails—that schizophrenics are inaccessible to cure by psychoanalytic therapy because of their inability to form stable and positive transference. Dr. Searles' writings have already been very influential in dispelling this notion. His sensitivity to concealed meanings in the bizarre and devious modes of schizophrenic communication and his scrupulous examination of his reactions to patients have consistently demonstrated, by example and contrast, that such a pessimistic view derives largely from clinicians' reluctance to tolerate massive expression of aggression and an inability to discern the object-preservative motivation in much of the schizohrenic's gross and alienating behavior.
In his new work, The Nonhuman Environment, Dr. Searles performs another outstanding service to psychiatry and psychoanalysis; he shows that our present concept of transference, which is typically restricted to human object relations, required expansion to include the non-human environment, and that only through such expansion will the full story of man's loves, hates and primary attachments become comprehensible. The author questions the validity of fleeing to some pat explanation “such as primitive peoples' regarding this environment in an animistic light, or modern-day psychiatry's predominantly assuming it to be only a frame for psychologically meaningful human living, rather than an…integral part of such living.”
Accordingly, the book is divided into five topical frames: (1) Man's kinship with the nonhuman environment, (2) The nonhuman environment as experienced by the healthy individual, (3) The nonhuman environment in psychosis and neurosis, (4) Cultural attitudes concerning man in his nonhuman environment, (5) The potential value of the further investigation of this subject.
Parts I and II discuss historical, philosophical and scientific attitudes toward the non-human environment, concluding with an exploration of the fa