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Purporting to be a series of critical essays on psychoanalysis, this collection quickly deteriorates into another argumentum ad hominem, with Freud, as usual, being the object of necrophiliac sniping. Many of the contributors are well known for their chronic vendettas against psychoanalysis, and in so doing, expose the pedestrian nature of somewhat collegiate resistances. The time-worn outcries, the dissillusioned hopes, and the polemical obsessionalism with psychoanalytical concepts are at least clearly stated.
Mr. Rachman's introduction, for example, states that, "Psychoanalysis...has managed to continue for a half of century without being noticeably influenced by the findings of conventional or academic psychology ..." It is inconceivable that even in the presence of such massive denial that the works of the late David Rapaport, the Hartmann-Kris-Lowenstein papers, or Waelder's book on theory could be ignored. Such distorted damnations continue with the expected begrudging praise of Freud at the end to