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FREUD AND BEYOND: A HISTORY OF MODERN PSYCHOANALYTIC THOUGHT. Stephen Mitchell and Margaret Black. New York, 1995, 293 pages, $14.00.
In their book, Freud and Beyond, Mitchell and Black take us on a psychoanalytic journey through the history of modern psychoanalytic theory and practice. Following a discussion of early Freudian concepts, the authors add to these beginnings by highlighting ego psychological, interpersonal, Kleinian, British object relations, Eriksonian, and Kohutian thought while examining contemporary analysts such as Kernberg, Schafer, and Loewald. The authors also offer a critique of current controversies in psychoanalytic theory and technique. The advantage of this book lies in its relative simplicity. Writing for the reader with little psychoanalytic training, the authors share the myths, developments, and inadequacies in psychoanalytic thought over time.
Mitchell and Black begin by discussing the myths frequently cited in this field of practice. This section is especially relevant for beginning social workers, who find practice concepts such as "human behavior in the social environment" difficult to integrate with their newly acquired understanding of contemporary psychoanalytic thought. The authors remind us that few of Freud's initial technical positions have remained intact without revision. They suggest that understanding Freud as the arbiter of psychoanalytic theory is similar to understanding Newtonian physics in our world of relativity. Rather than seeing analytic thought as a dated science, these readings remind us that aspects of ego psychology, object relations theory, and self psychology are now used by our profession in casework, case management, couples, and family therapy. They highlight the importance of understanding the meaning of the individual's interactions with his environment. Case vignettes illustrate the use of theory in practice situations.
Mitchell and Black begin with a summary of Freudian thought, including concepts of free association, transference and resistance, the drives, psychic conflict, the oedipal complex, and most importantly, the change from topographic to structural models. The authors then examine concepts of ego psychology. Beginning with Anna Freud's discussion of the need to analyze more than id content, they highlight the value in analyzing the client's defenses, while simultaneously respecting them. Mitchell and Black then discuss the contributions of Hartmann, who moved psychoanalysis away from a view of mental functioning as initiated in conflict and compromise formations toward notions of the conflictfree...