ABSTRACT

The broad influence of psychoanalysis has encouraged the publication of many essays and memoirs about Sigmund Freud. John E. Gedo’s Conceptual Issues in Psychoanalysis: Essays in History and Method is a particularly outspoken version of loyalist historiography. More crudely than Max Schur, but wholly in contrast to Richard Sterba’s humility, Gedo, presumably with the encouragement of some allies of his at the Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis, feels free to express prejudices that are especially illuminating about some prevalent common biases. It is striking how Gedo repeatedly invokes with favor what he calls the “mainstream” in psychoanalysis and how even more often he cites instances of what he chooses to call “dissidence.” Gedo adequately distinguishes his own approach from that of the Catholic church by his disclaiming any need in psychoanalysis for the proscription of heresy. W. W. Meissner’s Psychoanalysis and Religious Experience seeks to overcome the traditional Freudian iconoclasm toward religion.