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Psychoanalysis is a field with two means by which it develops and validates its theories: clinical participant-observation and empirical research. Psychoanalytic theory has developed mostly through clinical participant-observation, but empirical research methods have been employed since the early part of the twentieth century and their use has increased since the 1940s. Psychologist Robert R. Holt is one of the pioneers of psychoanalytic research. He was mentored by David Rapaport, whose primary interest was in understanding thinking and, hence, in developing an empirically grounded psychoanalytic theory of thought. Holt too worked in this vein. His efforts produced an empirical method to study primary and secondary process thought called the PRIPRO scoring system as well as an updated psychoanalytic theory of thinking. This work was developed over a fifty-year period and culminated in the book Primary Process Thinking: Theory, Measurement, and Research. It is a book born out of the scientist-practitioner model of clinical psychology. Hence, it is a book for practicing clinical psychologists who use projective psychological tests such as the Rorschach and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) to understand their patients. It is a book for practicing researchers who use projective tests and narrative texts to conduct research on thinking, and it is a book for any student of the field of psychoanalysis.
Primary Process Thinking is divided into two volumes. Volume 1 contains 153 pages organized into three chapters: The first is on the history of primary process thinking theory; the second is on the development of the PRIPRO measure of primary process thinking and the research that was conducted to validate the measure; and the third is on Holt's psychoanalytic theory of thinking that was developed from his research on primary process thought.
Volume 2 contains eighteen chapters and two appendixes comprising 847 pages. The volume briefly reiterates the story behind the dev