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Human beings are self surprising creatures. If in our sexuality we are full of surprises, we are also, by the same token, keen to take the edge off our desire, eager to deaden ourselves. This is what Freud referred to as the battle between the Eros and Thanatos, the hot war between aliveness and inertia. Freud showed us there were surprises on both sides.
Theodor Reik showed us that it is the surprises that matter most. Beginning with New Ways in Psychoanalytic Technique (1933), Surprise and the Psychoanalyst (1936), and Listening with the Third Ear (1948), Reik showed the way for psychoanalysts to bridge the gap between theory and practice.
Theodor Reik died on December 31, 1969, the official last day of the 1960s. Since his death, The National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP) has celebrated his life and work many times, but each time it seems his legacy falls deeper and deeper into some sort of analytic abyss. Although Reik's fate is not singular, it does appear that he may be due for the same sort of revival as Ferenzci or Loewald. In an age of pluralism and diversity, the field of psychoanalysis, as a whole, has fragmented. What Monroe Pray (2002) has called the classical/relational schism has become a dominant conflict within institutes as well as within the field as a whole. As the 1960s ended, there came a new generation of analytic candidates, students from fields other than medicine, who began to embrace the study of psychoanalysis. To put Reik's death into historical, analytic perspective, it was just at the time that Heinz Kohut created his self psychology, after he was rejected as President of the International, in Rome. I point to