Review by Choice Review
With this book, Fayek (a training psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist) signals a new direction in psychoanalytic studies, one that will likely set in motion a massive and crucial refiguring of the Freudian canon in its entirety. Fayek's critical gesture in this book is simple: offer a theory that is implicit in the Freudian texts, but which has been distorted by popular theorizations belonging to the main schools of thought. Fayek is an independent thinker, and his status as such alone distinguishes him from the dominant voices in the main schools of contemporary psychoanalysis. By focusing on the central construct of catharsis, Fayek returns to the implicit theory of the primary and secondary processes conditioning both mental health and pathology. This book should be required reading for students of psychoanalysis, both academic and apprentice. The book's implications are far ranging, from the ethical to the theoretical to the practical. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. M. Uebel University of Texas
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
