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A book is written at a certain time and inevitably finds a place in the history of that time. The story of today's psychoanalysis is one that, like certain plants, keeps producing many spores. These spores comprise new theories, new technical terms, new definitions of what psychoanalysis is and what its goals are; new approaches on how to do it and how to make interpretations. Some view this as a sign of unprecedented creativity, presaging extraordinary growth of the field. Others are pessimistic, seeing this as the flailing end movements accompanying a death rattle.
Responding to this confusion, Thompson's book is both pessimistic and optimistic. It is a book that took courage to write. What some view as our field's special joys, he does not waver in denouncing as sources of toxicity. For example, he says, “it has been my observation that theories have never played a significant role in the formulation of what analysts actually do” (p. xiii). Or, “It seems to me—I know this is heresy—that all the progress psychoanalysis has made since Freud's death has amounted to little, if any, improvement in our understanding of the human condition” (p. xx). Finally, he tersely comments, “It is my impression that psychoanalysis, like an old codger, is dying” (p. xix).
The title and spirit of this book are borrowed from a comment in Philip Rieff's (1959) seminal book Freud: The Mind of the Moralist, where the importance of candor is stressed as the distinguishing feature of psychoanalysis. Thompson, whose philosophical background is as rich as his psychoanalytical one, sees the goal of psychoanalysis as more than a cure but, ultimately, as “the right way to live.” The book plays down the alleged value of most of our theory and innovations, even its vaunted use of interpretations, while emphasizing the power and vitality of experience. We are changed, he argues, through experience, and psychoanalysis is effective to the degree that it achieves that special thing we call the “psychoa