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“Freuds psykoanalyse” is an amazing book in more than one respect. Firstly, it is a large book of more than 500 pages, and yet conveys the impression that the authors might leisurely have gone ahead for another thousand pages without exhausting their fund of knowledge. Secondly, it is written by two non-psychoanalysts (a Master of Literature and a psychologist) displaying an acute understanding of the essence of psychoanalysis. Thirdly, their aim is not to prove that Freud was wrong after all, but to study his work in depth. The authors think highly of Freud, if not of psychoanalysts in general.
In their preface, the authors give acknowledgment to Jacques Lacan and Jean Laplanche, and their way of reading the texts of Freud is, in fact, influenced by structuralism. However, their relationship to a French school of thought should not discourage potential readers with Anglo-Saxon leanings who have a horror of obscurity and prolific puns. On the contrary, the clear and honest language of the authors does not suggest profundities where there are none, but helps to pin-point the real ones.
The authors have intended to illustrate the work of Freud from three different points of view. A critical approach to all Freud's more important writings takes up a major part of the book. The authors also make an effort to integrate the birth of psychoanalysis into the history of philosophy, literature, physics and biology, neurophysiology and neuroanatomy, psychology and psychiatry. Last but not least, the authors want to place Freudian theory within the frame of reference of historical materialism. However, the marriage between Marxist and Freudian thought was never