Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalysis. By Medard Boss. Trans., L. Lefebre. New York:  Basic Books, Inc., 1963. pp.  295.

In this book, Medard Boss offers another example of the contemporary efforts at synthesizing apparently divergent views of psychotherapeutic practice and theory. The pros and cons of the “existentialism” business is becoming a bit wearying, but Boss' book should not be overlooked. It is an important contribution to theory and practice. Dr. Boss presents his discussion not in terms of the European movement versus the psychoanalytic orientation, but by attempting to demonstrate how Daseinsanalysis fits into the psychoanalytic model; where and how it deepens practice and how the therapist, who follows Boss' views, handles specific issues in the therapeutic process. For example, Boss spends some little time and space on handling countertransference; on dream analysis (a specialty of his), and on handling the transference and acting-out. The book contains a most penetrating re-evaluation of the psychoanalytic “doctrine of neurosis.”

The chapter on “a patient who taught the author to see and to think differently” is a case history so powerful and gripping that it alone almost says what this alleged “new approach” is all about. Most of us have read so many case histories that it is fairly difficult to shock us. But this one is memorable, presenting a clinical picture so moving in its drama, so compelling in its humanness, that I know of nothing—save in literature—that compares. Others may consider this to be Boss' primary fault.

For this reviewer, the heart of the book is his comparative study of psychoanalytic therapy and psychoanalytic theory. This section constitutes “graduate” reading. It is obvious that Boss knows them both and knows them well. And Boss is a very clever writer. He forces one (gently) to think hard by stating that “Freud…gained an immediate and primary understanding of man through his discovery and practice of psychoanalysis. But he destroyed this primary understanding in a truly catastrophic fashion when he introduced his theoretical constructions” (p.