Psycho-analysis as history : negation and freedom in Freud /

Offered primarily for historians (but less professionally directed than Peter Gay's recent Freud for Historians, CH, Feb '86) this book says much to students of psychology and of Freud too--for it explains Freud clearly. Psycho-Analysis as History is structured in three parts. It first presents Freud's work as "interpretive of the past, rather than as predictive of the future," and discusses cogently the fundamental phenomena of dreams, infantile sexuality, and ontogenesis in terms of such primary concepts as repression. Second, past and present are related by a thoughtful use of the idea of transference in psychoanalysis. Third, rather than claiming simple identities, Roth offers group analogies to the individual phenomena previously discussed. The author's rhetorical stance is nicely expository rather than abstractly polemic, and the book does teach. It has the virtues of a thorough grounding in Freud's work and a finely woven and coherent argument that is clear. The book also relates ideas from current psychoanalytic object relations theory, philosophy of history, philosophy of science, and psychoanalysis. Recommended for advanced undergraduates and above. -R. Shilkret, Mount Holyoke College